_All in the Wrong._ Next day business was a little brisk at the bank, and, considering my short apprenticeship, I acquitted myself tolerably well. I took Curling’s place and paid or received the cheques, &c., as they were presented, and what was extremely wonderful, found at the end of the day that I had made no mistake. I also conferred with two or three customers in the manager’s private room, performing the simple duty of listening to them with a very grave face, and dismissing them in a style that excited Mr. Spratling, who had a slow and laborious mind, into applause. When the bank was closed I went to my lodgings to get some dinner, not intending to call at Grove End until late in the evening. The fact was, my uncle had spoken of leaving London with the devoted couple at four o’clock; Updown would be reached by seven, and I had no wish to intrude until the violence and agitation of the meeting at Grove End should be in some degree calmed. My dinner, composed of a mutton chop and a pint of red wine, was soon despatched. I pulled an arm-chair to the open window, lighted a pipe, and surrendered myself up to various reflections. Among other things, I remember thinking how very pretty my landlady’s house was, how snugly it would accommodate a newly-married pair--and then I thought of Theresa. In imagination I pictured her my wife, moving, at this sunset hour, with watering-pot in hand, among the flowers in the garden, ever and anon creeping up to the window, where I was seated, to give me a flower, and let me take a long look into her bright and speaking eyes. Heavens! how the wheel goes round! Not very long before I had figured another young lady as my wife, offering me flowers through that very identical window, with all the sweetness of her spirit beaming like the moon in the dark azure of her eyes. That picture was blotted out. Did I care? A fiddle! I liked the other picture much better. Why, even that reverence, which, despite Conny’s indifference to me, I should ever have remembered her beauty with, was sunk, was destroyed by the consideration that her name was now CURLING, and that the frizzy cashier was privileged to call her HIS! His! Imagine that cockneyfied forefinger, that long forefinger with the olive-coloured nail and the dreadful ring, chucking Conny’s dimpled chin, playing with Conny’s golden hair! Faugh! The rose that makes the beauties of your sweetheart’s white bosom killing, becomes a sordid, vulgar flower when transferred on the morrow to the char-woman, and pinned by her against the dirt of the handkerchief about her chest. Though idealism has its limits, yet its circle had been a big one for Conny, and there was little she could have done in it _alone_ that would have endangered her charms in my eyes. But she had chosen to lug Mr. Curling into the magic realm; and souse! the spell was broken.