Willoughby was, as before said, a man with little imagination in his temperament, at least of no very lively fancy; but there was a kind of vague impatience at times in his mind, scarcely to be any better accounted for than the fits of gloom he felt creeping, as it were, over him, and which he checked only by a strong effort to think. Sir Godfrey felt, in fact, rather an indescribable satisfaction than otherwise, and a somewhat reviving interest, at the little matter of business that had returned on his hands, none the less that it took the aspect of a kind duty. Paris itself was certainly a degree nearer his attention, so soon as the concerns of any one in it, however obscure, were thus dependent on his own, stirring up an odd anxiety as to whether she were alive or dead, and really deserving; all which, the more unusual it was to his habits, bore with the greater novelty of sensation on a man whose ordinary habits had been somewhat abruptly broken up. Singular, indeed, as he rode along, grew the thought of how this vast city contrived to live from day to day? the question, yet more perplexing, how it spent its time? still less conceivable, to what end was all the constant movement, thickening and shifting far along the Rue St Honoré, in dust and sunlight? Nay, with a smiling sense of its absurdity, the baronet caught himself involuntarily pondering some such incalculable problem, and for a moment striving to put its organisation together, while the bridle lay slack on his horse’s neck, and his limbs kept time to the motion, as the noble black went stepping elastically on. Even in that fashionable street they excited notice amid its rattling cortège of equestrians and equipages, its rainbow quivering of dress, feathered, embroidered, gilded and laced and rustling, where all the artifice of French fashion was in its afternoon glory, with bell-hoop and white hair—from the queue-tag and three-cornered beaver, lace cravat, and ruffles, and pocket-flap, to the knee-buckles and the false calves, white or flesh-coloured, and high-heeled—treading on out-turned toes—while the smooth, tinted faces, with their mole-specks and black beauty-spots, seemed to have banished from about them, in the sun’s full influence, all effect of hair: though it was scarce so much the soberly-garbed rider, in dark riding-coat and boots, with military stock, as the jet gloss of Black Rupert, whose full nostril seemed half conscious of his master’s pride in him. Nor was it merely that the flickering blaze of the street disagreed with his mood, when Colonel Willoughby turned out of it through a quieter line of that gay fauxbourg, slightly using the spur: he shrank involuntarily from those of his countrymen who seemed to be in Paris, with their gregarious yet unsocial air, their loud voices, causeless laughter, and cool stare, their ill-affected ease of dress, their round morning hats at all hours, and their sudden knowing looks of interest from his horse to him, not