Of all living creatures, perhaps Laurence O'Boyneville would have seemed to a superficial observer the last to fall a victim to a sudden and unreasoning passion. When a man attains the age of forty without one pulse of his heart being quickened by any tender emotion, it is to be expected that he will jog quietly on to fifty; and that if then he dislikes the prospect of a lonely old age, uncheered except by the attentions of a housekeeper--who, if she does not poison him with subtle doses of tartar emetic, will most likely forge a codicil to his will, and possess herself of his goods and chattels when he is dead,--he will look out for some wealthy widow of his own age, and settle quietly down to the enjoyment of ponderous dinners and expensive wines. And yet, on reflection, it seems very probable that the busy man--the plodding labourer in the arid fields of life--is the most likely subject for that sudden love which springs into life vigorous and perfect as Minerva when she burst armed and helmeted from the brain of Jove. The man most apt to fall in love with unknown Beauty in an omnibus, is the man who has least time for the cultivation of accredited Beauty's society in the drawing-rooms of his friends. Sooner or later the god claims his prey; and the unbeliever who has gone scatheless for twenty years has good reason to dread the chances of the one-and-twentieth. Mr. O'Boyneville pushed his way up Dr. Molyneux's staircase at half-past eleven a free man; but he descended the same staircase at a quarter to one as fettered a slave as Samson when they bore him from the false embraces of Delilah; and yet no artful enchantress spread her nets for his entanglement, no mercenary Circe wove her spell for his destruction. The crowd upon the landing-place grew closer as the night waxed older, and in the confusion occasioned by one set of people always struggling to get away, and another set of people always struggling to get into the drawing-rooms, to say nothing of chivalrous young men for ever striving to carry ices or other airy refreshments to distressed damsels, the loungers who did not care about dancing had enough to do to keep their ground. It was this perpetual motion that drove the mighty O'Boyneville on to the very flight of stairs where Cecil sat pensive and silent, while the buzz of voices around her grew every moment louder. Having nothing better to do, the barrister lounged with his back against the wall and looked down at the fair aristocratic face of his neighbour, while he meditated upon the great slate case. But being a student of character, he fell to musing on the lady sitting below him--sitting almost at his feet, as it were, with only the width of the stair-carpet between them.