He had grown accustomed to his life in chambers; and albeit he was much attached to his father, and was amiably tolerant of his brother and sisters, he could but feel that this solitary existence better suited his temper than residence in a family circle. At Dorchester it had been very difficult for him to be alone. Out of business hours his sisters considered that they had a claim upon him, a right to waste his life in the most trivial amusements and engagements. If he withdrew himself from their society, and that of their numerous dearest friends, they accused him of grumpiness, and thought themselves ill-treated. He had chafed against the waste of life, the utter futility of those engagements which prevented his keeping level with the intellectual growth of the age. He felt that his youth was slipping from under him, leaving him stationary, when every pulse of his being beat impatiently for progress. And now it was pleasant to him to be his own master, free to make the best possible use of his days. He found a few friends in London whose society suited him, and only a few. Among these the man of whom he saw most was Cuthbert Ramsay, a young Scotchman, who had been his chief companion at Cambridge, who had studied medicine for three years in Leipsic and Paris with Ludwig and Pasteur, and who was now at St. Thomas’s. The two young men ran up against each other in that main artery of London life, the Strand, in the January twilight, and renewed the friendly intimacy of that bygone time when Ramsay had been at Trinity and Dalbrook at Trinity Hall. They dined together at a restaurant on the evening of that first meeting, and after dinner Theodore took his friend to his chambers, where the two sat late into the night talking over college reminiscences of hall and river. Cuthbert Ramsay had been one of the most remarkable undergraduates of those days, notable alike for mental and physical gifts which lifted him out of the ruck. He was six feet two—with the form of an athlete and as handsome a face as was ever seen within the gates of Trinity,—and these advantages of person, which would have been noteworthy in any man, were the more remarkable in him, because of his utter indifference to them, or, perhaps, it may be said, complete unconsciousness of them. He knew that he was a big man, because his tailor told him as much; but he had never taken into consideration the question as to whether he was or was not a handsome man; indeed, except when he had his hair cut, an operation which he always submitted to unwillingly and of dire necessity, it is doubtful if he ever looked into a glass long enough to know what manner of man he was—certainly not at his morning toilet, when he moved restlessly about the room, hairbrushes in hand, belabouring his handsome head, and exercising his extraordinary memory by the repetition of some scientific formula acquired during the previous night’s reading.