None among his acquaintance tried to know him well, for his manner
and moods did not excite curiosity or deep friendship. He was not a
man who seemed to have anything on his mind, anything to conceal,
anything to impart. From his casual remarks it was generally
understood that he was country-born, a native of some place in
Wessex; that he had come to London as a young man in a banking-house,
and had risen to a post of responsibility; when, by the death of his
father, who had been fortunate in his investments, the son succeeded
to an income which led him to retire from a business life somewhat
early.

One evening, when he had been unwell for several days, Doctor Bindon
came in, after dinner, from the adjoining medical quarter, and smoked
with him over the fire. The patient's ailment was not such as to
require much thought, and they talked together on indifferent
subjects.

'I am a lonely man, Bindon--a lonely man,' Millborne took occasion to
say, shaking his head gloomily. 'You don't know such loneliness as
mine . . . And the older I get the more I am dissatisfied with
myself. And to-day I have been, through an accident, more than
usually haunted by what, above all other events of my life, causes
that dissatisfaction--the recollection of an unfulfilled promise made
twenty years ago. In ordinary affairs I have always been considered
a man of my word and perhaps it is on that account that a particular
vow I once made, and did not keep, comes back to me with a magnitude
out of all proportion (I daresay) to its real gravity, especially at
this time of day. You know the discomfort caused at night by the
half-sleeping sense that a door or window has been left unfastened,
or in the day by the remembrance of unanswered letters. So does that