It was now the 22nd of December 1808. I cannot refrain from recording the date. Steiner had been during the last six weeks at Antwerp, and was expected to return in a day or two. He had purchased at a sale in that city a great quantity of pictures, which had just arrived, and were now in the shop. They were severally of no great value, but the purchase had brought Bromley's account at the banker's to a very low ebb. Mrs. Steiner and the child were going to spend the Christmas holidays with some relatives residing at Canterbury. She passed through the shop silently and without even noticing me, and hurried the boy along lest he should wish--and he did make an effort to do so--to take his farewell of me. It was evening at the time, and Bromley was in his back parlour. I was busy in the shop that evening; it was business of my own, which I transacted secretly. Having completed it, I did what was rather unusual with me; I opened the door of the parlour, and bade Bromley good night. All that evening I hovered about the neighbourhood. I had not resolution to go from it. Now that the time was come when I should be enabled, in all human probability, to fulfil, to glut my vengeance, my heart failed me. The feeling which had supported me during the last six months, which had been more necessary to my soul than daily sustenance to my body, had deserted me then, but that by a powerful effort I contrived to retain it. While I deplored having returned to Bromley's employment, and the abject apology I had made to Steiner, that very step and its consequences made it impossible for me to recede. It must be. It was my fate to do it, and it was theirs that it should be done. What trivial incidents cling to the memory sometimes, when they are linked by association to greater events! I was, I remember standing at the door of a small chandler's shop in Dean-street, almost lost to myself, and to all that was passing about me. The woman of the house tapped me on the shoulder. "Will you be so good," she said, "as to move on; you are preventing my customers from entering the shop." "My good woman," I said, "I hope there is no harm in my standing here?" "Not much harm," replied the woman, good-humouredly. "I hope you have been doing nothing worse to-day?" I started, and gazed at the woman earnestly. She smiled. "Why, bless the man! you look quite flurried. I haven't offended you, I hope?" "No, no!" I muttered hastily, and moved away. The agony I endured for the next hour I cannot describe.