That was the then finale of the intimacy between Laura Molyneux and Laurence Alsager. In the course of the next week he started on his tour; in the course of the next month St. George's, Hanover Square, was the scene of her marriage,--a bishop welding the chains. And now two years had elapsed, and he was back in London, pretty much the same as if he had never left it; and she was asking whether he had returned, and he had begun to feel a great interest in Lady Mitford; and Sir Charles Mitford evidently thought Mrs. Hammond a most delightful person, and every thing was _à tort et à travers_, as it has been, is, and always shall be, in the great world of London. _Nil admirari_ is the motto on which your precocious youth piques himself; but which is adopted in all due seriousness and sobriety by the calm student of life. Who wonders at anything?--at the peevishness of your wife; at the ingratitude of the child for whom you have pinched and slaved; at the treachery of the one familiar friend; at the enormous legacy left you by the uncle whose last words to you were that you were a jackanapes, and, so far as he was concerned, should be a beggar? The man of the world is surprised at nothing; he is not _l'homme blasé_ of the caricaturist; he is not an atom astonished at finding nothing in anything; on the contrary, he finds plenty of novelty in every variety of life; but nothing which may happen to him excites the smallest wonderment on his part. So that when Colonel Alsager walked into the Guards club to dinner, and received from the hall-porter a small note with an address in a handwriting perfectly familiar to him, he was not in the least surprised. But he looked at the note, and twisted it between his fingers, and even put it into his waistcoat pocket, as he walked up to the table whereon stood the framed _menu_, and left it there while he walked round and spoke to two or three men who were already at dinner; and it was not until he was comfortably seated at his little table, and had eaten a few mouthfuls of soup, that he took it from his pocket, leisurely opened it, and bringing the candle within range, began to read it. Even then he paused for a moment, recollecting with what heart-throbs of anxiety and sensations of acute delight he used to read the previous epistles from the same source; then, as with an effort, he set himself to its perusal. It was very short. "I shall be at home to-morrow at three, and hope to see you. I hear all sorts of rumours, which you alone can solve. _Chi non sa niente non dubita di niente!_ It will be for you to read the riddle. L." He smiled outright as, after reading it and restoring it to his pocket, he said to himself, "The old story; she always made a mystery when there was no other excitement; but I'll go, for all that."