I had returned to England, to fill a prominent place in my own little
world, without relations whom I loved, without friends whose society I
could enjoy. Hopeful, ardent, eager for the enjoyment of life, I had
brought with me to my own country the social habits and the free range of
thought of a foreign University; and, as a matter of course, I failed to
feel any sympathy with the society--new to me--in which my lot had been
cast. Beset by these disadvantages, I had met with a girl, possessed of
remarkable personal attractions, and associated with my earliest
remembrances of my own happy life and of my mother's kindness--a girl, at
once simple and spirited; unspoilt by the world and the world's ways, and
placed in a position of peril due to the power of her own beauty, which
added to the interest that she naturally inspired. Estimating these
circumstances at their true value, did a state of mind which rendered me
insensible to the distinctions that separate the classes in England,
stand in any need of explanation? As I thought--and think still--it
explained itself.



My stepmother and I parted on the garden terrace, which ran along the
pleasant southern side of the house.

The habits that I had contracted, among my student friends in Germany,
made tobacco and beer necessary accompaniments to the process of
thinking. I had nearly exhausted my cigar, my jug, and my thoughts, when
I saw two men approaching me from the end of the terrace.

As they came nearer, I recognized in one of the men my fat domestic in
black. He stopped the person who was accompanying him and came on to me