I was happy enough at first, and it was well I was. It was a long time before I was happy again. Having in mind Miss Leigh, I wrote and secured a few letters of introduction; but they were from people who did not care anything for me to people who did not care anything about them--semi-fashionable folk, mainly known in social circles, and I had no money to throw away on society. One, indeed, a friend of mine had gotten for me from Mr. Poole to a man of high standing both in business and social circles, the president of a manufacturing company, with which, as I learned later, Mr. Poole had formerly some connection. This gentleman's name was Leigh, and I wondered if he were the same person who had been posted by Kalender at the head of my story of the delayed train. I thought of presenting the letter. It, however, was so guarded that I thought it would not do me the least good, and, besides, I did not wish to owe anything to Lilian Poole's father, for I felt sure his influence had always been against me, and I was still too sore to be willing to accept a favor at his hands. It was well I did not present it, for Mr. Poole with well-considered and characteristic prudence, had written a private letter restricting the former letter to mere social purposes, and had intimated that I had been a failure in my profession and was inclined to speculate. This character he had obtained, as I subsequently learned, from Peck. The new conditions with which I was confronted had a singular effect on me. I was accustomed to a life where every one knew me and I knew, if not every one, at least something good or bad about every one. Here I might have committed anything short of murder or suicide without comment, and might have committed both without any one outside of the reporters and the police and Dix caring a straw about it. I felt peculiarly lonely because I was inclined to be social and preferred to associate with the first man I met on the street to being alone. In fact, I have always accounted it one of my chief blessings that I could find pleasure and entertainment for a half-hour in the company of any man in the world except a fool or a man of fashion, as the old writers used to speak of them, or as we call them now, members of the smart set.