He had no one in whom he could confide, no one whose advice he could seek, in this crisis of his life. George Wainwright was away; and to whom else could he turn? Although he and his mother were in their way very fond of each other, there had never been any kind of confidence between them--certainly not that confidence which would have enabled him to lay bare his heart before her, and ask for her counsel and consolation. Mrs. Derinzy was essentially a worldly woman, and Paul knew perfectly that she would scout the idea of his marrying, as she considered, beneath him; and instead of pouring balm into his wounded spirit, would, after her fashion, try to cicatrise the hurt by telling him that he had had a fortunate escape from an unworthy alliance. His father, long trained in habits of obedience, would have repeated his wife's opinion. Had he been allowed to give his own, it would have been flavoured with that worldly wisdom of which he was so proud, and would probably have been to the effect that, however one treated young persons in that position of life, one certainly did not marry them, and that he could not possibly imagine any son of his doing anything so infernally stupid. Those who had known Paul Derinzy as the light-hearted, light-headed young man of society, enjoying himself in every possible way, extracting the greatest amount of pleasure out of every hour of his life, and allowing no sense of responsibility to weigh upon him, would hardly have recognised him in the pale, care-worn man with hollow cheeks who might be seen occasionally eating his solitary dinner at the club, but who never joined the gay circle in the smoking-room, or was to be found in any of those haunts of pleasure which formerly he had so assiduously frequented. With Daisy always in his mind, he had an irresistible inclination to moon about those places where he had been in the habit of seeing her. In the dusk of the evening he would walk for hours up and down George Street, in front of Madame Clarisse's house, sometimes fancying he recognised Daisy's reflection on the window-blind, and then being half tempted to rush across and seek admission to her at any cost. And he would go down to the spot in Kensington Gardens--now a blank desert of misery--and wander up and down, picturing to himself the delightful summer lounging there, and recalling every item of the conversation which had then been held.