over the leaders, and groaned aloud at the announcement of some wealthy
marriage made by one of his quondam friends, or chuckled at the record
of another quondam friend's insolvency--when he had poked the fire
savagely half a dozen times in an hour, cursing the pinched grate and
the bad coals during every repetition of the operation--when he had
smoked his last cigar, and varnished his favourite boots, and looked
out of the window, and contemplated himself gloomily in the wretched
little glass over the narrow chimney-piece,--Captain Paget's
intellectual resources were exhausted, and an angry impatience took
possession of him. Then, in defiance of the pelting rain or the
lowering sky, he flung his slippers into the farthest corner--and the
farthest corner of Mrs. Kepp's parlour was not very remote from the
Captain's arm-chair--he drew on the stoutest of his varnished boots--
and there were none of them very stout now--buttoned his perfect
overcoat, adjusted his hat before the looking-glass, and sallied forth,
umbrella in hand, to make his way westward. Westward always, through
storm and shower, back to the haunts of his youth, went the wanderer
and outcast, to see the red glow of cheery fires reflected on the
plate-glass windows of his favourite clubs; to see the lamps in
spacious reading-rooms lit early in the autumn dusk, and to watch the
soft light glimmering on the rich bindings of the books, and losing
itself in the sombre depths of crimson draperies. To this poor worldly
creature the agony of banishment from those palaces of Pall Mall or St.
James's-street was as bitter as the pain of a fallen angel. It was the
dullest, deadest time of the year, and there were not many loungers in
those sumptuous reading-rooms, where the shaded lamps shed their
subdued light on the chaste splendour of the sanctuary; so Captain
Paget could haunt the scene of his departed youth without much fear of
recognition: but his wanderings in the West grew more hopeless and
purposeless every day. He began to understand how it was that people