In that tall square block of buildings known as Vernon-chambers, Piccadilly, a London bachelor must be fastidious indeed if he cannot, no matter what his tastes may be, find a residence to suit him. There are suites of rooms, easy of access and commanding enormous rents, and there are single apartments, so loftily situate that they look down upon Buckingham Palace in the distance, which, can be had for a small sum--that is to say, a comparatively small sum when the situation and accommodation are taken into consideration. The advantages of a residence in Vernon-chambers are great and manifold. It is a great thing for a young man new to the metropolis, and just commencing his career in diplomacy, law, or commerce--for commerce has been found to pay, and is now quite as fashionable as any of the learned professions--to be enabled to put 'Vernon-chambers' on his card, it being a recognised address amongst those dinner-and-ball-giving members of society, the cultivation of whose good will is so necessary to the well-being of all young men. Then, again, it is in the most desirable quarter of the town; handy to the clubs and to the park; within a shilling fare of all the theatres; and yet providing its inhabitants--those who dwell in the topmost stories at all events--with plenty of fresh air; and the pleasant expanse of the Green-park to look upon, instead of the dismal line of brick or stucco abomination on which most Londoners are compelled to feast their eyes when they come to the window in ungratified search for light and air. It is probable, however, that none of these considerations figured as inducements in the mind of Mr. Bryan Duval, when, some three years before the period of our story, he took a set of rooms on the second floor, and agreed, without hesitation or attempt at abatement, to pay for them the rather stiff price of three hundred a year. Mr. Duval did not go much into fashionable society; but at such great houses as he was in the habit of frequenting in the season he would have been as welcome if he lived in Greek-street, Soho--a choice locality, in which, indeed, at some anterior period of his life, he had once pitched his tent. He was not a member of any club, and he would as soon have thought of going into the Thames as into the park; he hated fresh air (his first order in connection with his new rooms was to have double windows made to exclude the noise), and, if he occasionally looked out on the Green-park, it was not with any idea of pleasing his eyes with its verdure, or amusing himself with contemplating what was going on there, but rather in a fit of abstraction, when he had got into what he had called 'a knot' in the work on which he was engaged, and during the disentanglement of which he would, perhaps, lean his forehead against the window, and stare straight out before him, with a prolonged gaze, which saw nothing.