Vaughan might have wondered more, if Flixton had not returned at that moment and overwhelmed him with importunities to dine with him the next evening. “Gage and Congreve of the 14th are coming from Gloucester,” he said, “and Codrington and two or three yeomanry chaps. You must come. If you don’t, I’ll quarrel with you and call you out! It’ll do you good after the musty, fusty, goody-goody life you’ve been leading. Brereton’s coming, and we’ll drink King Billy till we’re blind!” Vaughan hesitated. He had taken his place on the coach, but—but after all there was that parcel. He must do something about it. It seemed to be his fate to be tempted, yet—what nonsense that was! Why should he not stay in Bristol if he pleased? “You’re very good,” he said at last. “I’ll stay.” Yet on his way to his room he paused, half-minded to go. But he was ashamed to change his mind again, and he strode on, opened his door, and saw the parcel, a neat little affair, laid on the table. It bore in a clear handwriting the address which he had seen on the basket at Mary Smith’s feet. But, possibly because an hour of the Honourable Bob’s company had brushed the bloom from his fancy, it moved him little. He looked at it with something like indifference, felt no inclination to kiss it, and smiled at his past folly as he took it up and set off to return it to its owner. He had exaggerated the affair and his feelings; he had made much out of little, and a romance out of a chance encounter. He could smile now at that which had moved him yesterday. Certainly: _Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart_, _’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range_ _The Court, camp, Church, the vessel and the mart_, _Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange_ _Pride, fame, ambition to fill up his heart_. And the Honourable Bob, with his breezy self-assertion, had brought this home to him and, with a puff of everyday life, had blown the fantasy away. He was still under this impression when he reached Queen’s Square, once the pride of Bristol, and still, in 1831, a place handsome and well inhabited. Uniformly and substantially built, on a site surrounded on three sides by deep water, it lay, indeed, rather over-near the quays, of which, and of the basins, it enjoyed a view through several openings. But in the reign of William IV. merchants were less averse from living beside their work than they are now. The master’s eye was still in repute, and though many of the richest citizens had migrated to Clifton, and the neighbouring Assembly Rooms in Prince’s Street had been turned into a theatre, the spacious square, with its wide lawn, its lofty and umbrageous elms, its colony of rooks, and, last of all, its fine statue of the Glorious and Immortal Memory, was still the abode of many respectable people. In one corner stood the Mansion House; a little further along the same side the Custom House; and a third public department, the Excise, also had offices here.