'But when, where, how did it all come about?' 'The most miserable stories are often told in a few words, and thus told best; and, Goring, I shall tell you mine,' replied Dalton. 'When I was being educated for the service--my parents being dead--I was boarded by my uncle Sir John Dalton--on whose hands and generosity I was utterly cast--with a tutor at Hastings. 'My uncle was most generous. I had quarterly as much pocket-money--too much indeed--as a young fellow in his early teens could desire to have; I had a horse at my command, a pleasure-boat whenever I liked it, and was a frequent attender at the theatre; for my tutor was a careless fellow, fond of amusement too, and did not look sufficiently after me. 'All this was some ten or twelve years ago. At the theatre there was a young girl who figured in the bills as Miss Laura Dorillion, and who was deemed quite a star. 'One story went that she was a lady of high family, who, in a rage for histrionic fame, had fled from home, changed her name, and adopted the stage as a profession; another story was that she was the only daughter of a man of rank, whom dissipation or bad speculations on the turf had ruined; and rumour added that, when only twelve years of age, she had played Juliet to perfection in amateur theatricals at a fashionable West End School; at fifteen she was a genius; at seventeen she was cast as Miss Hardcastle in the "School for Scandal;" and more than once when I saw her as Juliet I longed, with all my soul, to be her Romeo. 'Boylike I fell madly in love with her--in love as dreamy boys at my then years are wont to do--and nightly I haunted the theatre, often in defiance of my tutor, and my studies became a farce; in fact they were utterly neglected, and I had but one thought--Laura Dorillion! 'How pretty--how sweetly pretty--the name sounded to me, and I was never weary of repeating it to myself. '_Was_ she pretty, you will ask? When made-up for the stage and surrounded by all its accessories, she looked downright lovely; but, when watching her going from her lodgings to morning rehearsal, I was obliged to confess to myself that my goddess had rather a large mouth, but fine eyes with a sleepy or dreamy expression, long lashes and drooping lids of which she could make a most seductive use; that in figure she was tall but not ungraceful, and was neither fully grown nor developed; but there seemed a great want of finish about her for one who was alleged to be the daughter of a noble family. This might proceed, I thought, from the style of her toilette, which certainly did not come from Swan & Edgar's.