So there he sat, discussing many things with his aunt, telling her strange stories of his adventures in foreign lands--all true, indeed, but tinged in the telling with a gleam of the marvellous, for the purpose of exciting Lady Fleetwood's astonishment. In that endeavour he was very successful, for the organ of wonder was quite sufficiently developed in her head; and the day passed over very pleasantly, till it was time for Charles to seek a lodging for the night, which he easily found at the hotel opposite, where his friend Mr. Winkworth had already taken up his quarters. Before he bade his aunt farewell, however, he gave directions to her footman, if Mr. Middleton called, to inquire particularly where he was to be found in London, and to let him know that his two friends, Mr. Winkworth and Mr. Marston, were at the hotel; and then came inquiries from Lady Fleetwood as to who this other crony of her nephew's could be. "I will not stop to tell you all, my dear aunt," replied Charles, who by this time had his hat in his hand: "suffice it that he is the most charming man you ever saw--take care you do not find him too charming. He is quite a Don Alonzo-ish sort of man--pale, dark, wonderfully handsome, more than six feet high, with a sabre-cut across his face, sufficient to win the hearts of all the women in London. He is a colonel in the Spanish service, and has all sorts of orders and chains, though he is not above seven or eight-and-twenty. I believe his mother was a Spanish lady--I think, indeed, somebody told me so; but at all events he is quite the person to fall in love with, if you are inclined, my dear aunt." "My dear Charles, how can you be so absurd?" exclaimed his aunt; "but now you have not told me how you met with him." "I'll keep that for a _bonne bouche_," replied Charles, and walked away to his hotel. CHAPTER IX. It is my full and firm belief, that if, on any given day of any given year, you were, dear reader, to take the accurate history of any five square miles, not exactly a desert, upon the solid surface of the earth, and examine with a microscope the acts and deeds, the circumstances, the accidents, and the fate of the people upon it, you would find strange romances enough going on to stock a library. Look into a cottage--what will you find? Perhaps a romance of love and tenderness struggling with sorrows, difficulties, and penury; perhaps a broad farce of a quarrelsome wife and a drunken husband; perhaps a tragedy of sin, crime, and misery. Look into that stately mansion, the house of a great merchant--what is there? It may be the comedy of purse-proud affectation; it may be the tale of the tenderest affections and highest qualities; or it may show that agonizing struggle which the falling man makes to sustain himself upon the edge of the precipice at the foot of which he is soon to lie, dashed to pieces. A romance is but a microscopic view of some half-dozen human hearts.