So it had come at last! No longer to struggle on, a wretched outsider, a component of the "ruck" in the great race for name and fame and profit, but one of the select, taking the leading place in the leading periodical of the day, with the chance, if fortune favoured him, and he could only avail himself of the opportunity so long denied, and call into action the influences so long prompting him, of rendering himself from month to month an object of interest, a living something, an actual necessity to thousands of people whose faces he should never see, and who would yet know of him, and look with the deepest interest on the ideal creatures of his fancy. Pardon the day-dream now, for the good to be derived from action is now so real, so tangible, that the lotos-leaves shall soon be cast aside. And yet how fascinating is the vision which their charm has ever evoked for the young man bound under their spell! Honour, wealth, fame, love!--not all your riches, Capel Carruthers; not your county position, not your territorial influence, not your magisterial dignity, nor anything else on which you pride yourself, shall be half as sweet to you as the dignified pride of the man who looks around him, and seeing himself possessed of all these enviable qualities, says: "By my own hand, by the talent which God has given me, and by His help alone, unaided by birth, or riches, or influence, I have made myself what I am!" The crisis in George Dallas's life had arrived; the ball was at his feet, and with the opportunity so urgent on him, all his desultoriness, till his lazy dilettanteism, vanished. He felt at last that life was real and earnest, and determined to enter upon it at once. With what big schemes his heart was filled, with what quixotic dreams his brain was bursting! In his own mind his triumphant position in the future was so assured that he could not resist taking an immediate foretaste of his happiness; and so on the very day of the receipt of Cunningham's letter a box containing some very rare Japanese fans, screens, and china, was despatched anonymously, addressed to Miss Carruthers. The cost of these trifles barely left George Dallas enough to pay his fare back to Amsterdam. But what of that? Was he not on the high road to fortune, and could he not make money as he liked? The polyglot waiter received him, if not with open arms, at least with a smiling face and a babble of many-tongued welcomes, and placed in his hands a letter which had been more than a week awaiting him. George glanced at its superscription, and a shadow crossed his face as he recognized Routh's hand-writing. He had looked upon that connection as so completely cut asunder, that he had forgotten his last communication necessitated a reply--an acknowledgment of the receipt of the money, at least--and he opened the letter with an undefined sensation of annoyance. He read as follows: S. M.-street, June --, 18--.