On a November morning, with an incipient yellow fog hanging about, the appearance of the room in which breakfast was waiting for him was calculated to cast a gloom over a temperament never so little open to such influences; and Dennis Falconer as he opened his bedroom door and came slowly out, looked as though his mental atmosphere was already sufficiently heavy. He always breakfasted punctually at nine o’clock, and he never went to bed before one; it simply never occurred to him to make any concession to the emptiness of his present life by spending more than seven hours out of the twenty-four in sleep, even if he had been physically able to do so. And there were days when the intervening seventeen hours hung on his hands with an almost unendurable weight. He had never been a man who readily made friends, and his tendency in this direction had steadily decreased as he grew older, so that the few men with whom he was intimate were friends of his early manhood; and, as it happened, none of these intimates were in England at the moment. He was absolutely incapable of forming those cheery, unmeaning acquaintanceships which make the savour of life to so many unoccupied men. He was one of those men with whom no one thinks of becoming familiar; who is vaguely supposed either to have a private and select circle of friends, or to be sufficient for himself; whose demeanour, correct, self-contained, and a trifle formal, seems to hold the world at a distance. Consequently his intercourse with his fellow-creatures was limited by his present life to slight conversation on the topics of the day at his club, or in various drawing-rooms where he paid grave, stiff calls, or attended stately functions. Cut off from his own particular work he had no interests and no pursuits. It was a dreary life in truth, and it was little wonder that Falconer’s expression grew rather more austere with every week. The sentiments of a man of his temperament towards a world in which there seemed so little place for him, and from which he could derive so little satisfaction, would inevitably tend towards stern disapproval.