The brightest thoroughfare in London, Piccadilly, was looking very bright that autumn day, with all the windows of the few houses which can lay claim to anything of the beauty of grandeur glittering in the sun, and an astounding display of carriages, considering the season, enlivening the broad sloping road. The Greek Park was dotted over with groups of people, as in the summer-time, and along the broad path beyond the iron railings solitary pedestrians walked or loitered, unmolested by weather, just as it suited their fancy. The few and far-between benches had their occupants, of whom some had books, some cigars, and some babies. Perambulators were not wanting, neither were irascible elderly gentlemen to swear at them. It was happily too hot for hoops. This exceptional day was at its best and brightest when Harriet Routh came down the street in which she lived, crossed Piccadilly, and entered the Park. She was, as usual, very plainly dressed, and her manner had lost none of its ordinary quietude. Nevertheless, a close observer would have seen that she looked and breathed like a person in need of free fresh air, of movement, of freedom; that though the scene, the place in which she found herself, was indifferent to her, perhaps wholly unobserved by her, the influence upon her physical condition was salutary. She did not cross the grass, but walked slowly, and with her eyes turned earthwards, along the broad path near the railings. Occasionally she looked up, and lifted her head, as if to inhale as much as possible of the fresh air, then fell into her former attitude again, and continued her walk. Her face bore an expression of intense thought--the look of one who had brought a subject out with her in her mind, which subject she was resolved to think out, to look at in every aspect, to bring to a final decision. She kept a straight, clear course in her walk, looking neither to the right nor to the left, pondering deeply, as might have been seen by the steady tension of her low white forehead and the firm set of her lips. At last she paused, when she had traversed the entire length of the walk several times, and looked about her for an unoccupied seat. She descried one, with no nearer neighbour than the figure of a boy, not exactly ragged, but very shabby, extended on the grass beside it, resting on his elbows, with a fur cap pulled down over his eyes, leaving the greater portion of a tangled head exposed to view, and a penny illustrated journal, whose contents, judging by the intentness with which he was devouring them, must have been of a highly sensational character, stretched out on the ground before him. Harriet took no notice of the boy, nor did he perceive her, when she seated herself on the bench by which he lay. She sat down noiselessly, folded her hands, and let her head fall forward, looking out with the distant absorbed gaze which had become habitual to her. She sat very still,