The people who were abroad at that early hour were of a class quite
unknown to Mr. Oakhurst. There were milkmen and hucksters delivering
their wares, small tradespeople opening their shops, housemaids sweeping
doorsteps, and occasionally a child. These Mr. Oakhurst regarded with
a certain cold curiosity, perhaps quite free from the cynical disfavor
with which he generally looked upon the more pretentious of his
race whom he was in the habit of meeting. Indeed, I think he was not
altogether displeased with the admiring glances which these humble women
threw after his handsome face and figure, conspicuous even in a
country of fine-looking men. While it is very probable that this wicked
vagabond, in the pride of his social isolation, would have been coldly
indifferent to the advances of a fine lady, a little girl who ran
admiringly by his side in a ragged dress had the power to call a faint
flush into his colorless cheek. He dismissed her at last, but not
until she had found out--what, sooner or later, her large-hearted and
discriminating sex inevitably did--that he was exceedingly free and
open-handed with his money, and also--what, perhaps, none other of her
sex ever did--that the bold black eyes of this fine gentleman were in
reality of a brownish and even tender gray.

There was a small garden before a white cottage in a side-street,
that attracted Mr. Oakhurst's attention. It was filled with roses,
heliotrope, and verbena,--flowers familiar enough to him in the
expensive and more portable form of bouquets, but, as it seemed to him
then, never before so notably lovely. Perhaps it was because the dew was
yet fresh upon them; perhaps it was because they were unplucked: but
Mr. Oakhurst admired them--not as a possible future tribute to the
fascinating and accomplished Miss Ethelinda, then performing at the
Varieties, for Mr. Oakhurst's especial benefit, as she had often assured