smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say
nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your candle and
creep miserably to your lonely room.

Now, it in a stage-coach in the depth of winter, when three passengers
are warm and snug, a fourth, all besnowed and frozen, descends from the
outside and takes place amongst them, straightway all the three
passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their cloak collars, re-
arrange their "comforters," feel indignantly a sensible loss of caloric:
the intruder has at least made a sensation. But if you had all the
snows of the Grampians in your heart, you might enter unnoticed; take
care not to tread on the toes of your opposite neighbor, and not a soul
is disturbed, not a "comforter" stirs an inch. I had not slept a wink,
I had not even lain down all that night,--the night in which I had said
farewell to Fanny Trevanion; and the next morning, when the sun rose, I
wandered out,--where I know not: I have a dim recollection of long,
gray, solitary streets; of the river, that seemed flowing in dull,
sullen silence, away, far away, into some invisible eternity; trees and
turf, and the gay voices of children. I must have gone from one end of
the great Babel to the other; for my memory only became clear and
distinct when I knocked, somewhere before noon, at the door of my
father's house, and, passing heavily up the stairs, came into the
drawing-room, which was the rendezvous of the little family; for since
we had been in London, my father had ceased to have his study apart, and
contented himself with what he called "a corner,"--a corner wide enough
to contain two tables and a dumb-waiter, with chairs a discretion all
littered with books. On the opposite side of this capacious corner sat
my uncle, now nearly convalescent, and he was jotting down, in his
stiff, military hand, certain figures in a little red account-book; for
you know already that my Uncle Roland was, in his expenses, the most