Worldly or monetary matters were unchanged between them, as at that cruel time when he lost her; so perhaps he had only returned to London to stand idly by and see her become the wife of Desmond! After all that had passed between them, after all that seemed gone for ever, after the bitterness and mortification he had endured, the years of hopeless separation in a distant land, he could scarcely realize, while walking along the sunny and crowded pavement of Piccadilly, the assured fact that he had again seen and spoken with Clare Collingwood; and that the whole interview had not been one of those day-dreams in which, when in Beverley's society, he had been so often wont to indulge when quartered far up country in the burning East. Then he recalled the cold terms of that letter in which her father--a hard and heartless, frivolous and luxurious man of the world, with much of aristocratic snobbery in his composition--had bluntly informed him that the engagement between him and Clare was ended for ever, and _why_; and he resolved that neither at the baronet's club nor anywhere else would he waste a calling card upon him; and in this pleasant mood of mind he hailed a hansom and drove to the rooms of his friend Jerry Vane. CHAPTER V. HOW WILL IT END? If Jerry Vane was not very contented in mind, his rooms, the windows of which overlooked a fashionable square, bore evidence that he was surrounded by every luxury, that he was behind the young fellows of his set in nothing; while the velvet and silk cases for cigars or vestas that littered the table and mantelpiece, even the slippers and smoking-cap he wore, all the work of feminine fingers, seemed to hint of the many fair ones who were ready to console him. Possessed of means ample enough to indulge in every whim and fancy, the mantelpiece and the tables about him were littered by the 'hundred and one' objects with which a young man like Jerry is apt to surround himself. There were pipes of all kinds, whips, spurs, fencing-foils, revolvers, Derringer pistols, Bohemian glass, and gold-mounted bottles full of essences, statuettes pell-mell with soiled kid gloves, soda-water bottles, pink notes, faded bouquets, and French novels in their yellow covers. The hangings and furniture were elegant and luxurious, on the walls were some crayons of very fair girls in rather _décolleté_ dress, while on a marble console lay a gun-case, hunting-flasks, and many other things that were quite out of place in a drawing-room, and a Skye terrier and an enormous St. Bernard mastiff were gambolling together on a couple of great tiger-skins, the spoil of Trevor Chute's gun in some far Indian jungle. The day was far advanced, yet Jerry had not long breakfasted, and lay, not fully dressed, in a luxurious dressing-robe, tasselled and braided, on the softest of sofas, enjoying the inevitable cigar, when Chute was ushered in, and he sprang up to receive him.