"I am afraid you thought me very stupid, Mrs. Routh; and so I was indeed, to have kept you waiting so long, and not brought you the lemonade you wished for, after all. I was so frightened when I returned to the place where I had left you, and you were not there. The fact was, I got the lemonade readily enough; but I had forgotten my purse, and had no money to pay for it, so I had to go and find Kirkland in the reading-room, and got some from him." "Was he alone?" "Kirkland? O yes, alone, and bored as usual, abusing everybody and everything, and wondering what could possibly induce people to come to such a beastly hole. I hate his style of talk, and I could not help saying it was odd he should be one of the misguided multitude." "Did you see Mr. Hunt?" "Yes; he was just leaving when I met him, not in the sweetest of tempers. The way he growled about Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge (her mere name irritates him) amused me exceedingly." "Indeed. How has she provoked his wrath?" "I could not wait to hear exactly, but he said something about some man whom he particularly wanted as a 'pal' here--delightful way of talking, his! beats Kirkland's--having fallen into her clutches. I suppose he is left lamenting; but I fancy Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge is the safer companion of the two, unless the individual in question is uncommonly sharp." Harriet looked attentively and searchingly at George. His unconsciousness was evidently quite unfeigned, and she refrained from asking him a question that had been on her lips. "I came back to look for you as soon as ever I could get rid of Hunt," continued George; "but you had disappeared, and then I came here at once. Routh had not come in, I think, then?" "No," said Harriet, curtly. Then the conversation drifted to other matters, and George, who felt unusually happy and hopeful that day, was proportionately self-engrossed, and tested Harriet's power of listening considerably. She sat before him pale and quiet, and there was never a sparkle in her blue eyes, or a flush upon her white cheek; yet she was not cold, not uninterested, and if the answers she made, and the interest she manifested, were unreal, and the result of effort, at least she concealed their falsehood well. He talked of his mother and of his uncle, and told her how Mr. Felton had made him a present of a handsome sum of money only that morning. "And, as if to prove the truth of the saying that 'it never rains but it pours,'" said George, "I not only got this money from him, which a little time ago would have seemed positive riches to me, and a longer time ago would have saved me from--well, Mrs. Routh, I need not tell _you_ from what it would have saved me; but I got a handsome price for my story, and a proposal from the _Piccadilly_ people to do another serial for them, to commence in November."