The evening came to a close presently, and as he bent over Cecil to say good-night, Mr. O'Boyneville's manner was very much out of the common. "I have been talking to your aunt, Lady Cecil," he said, "and she tells me you leave town early next week. I have asked permission to call on you to-morrow, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse has given it. So it is not good-bye, you see, but _au revoir_." This was about the coolest speech which Cecil Chudleigh had ever had addressed to her. She looked at Mr. O'Boyneville with an expression of unmitigated astonishment, but he gave her hand a gripe that wounded the slender fingers with the rings which adorned them, and departed. "I've three hours' work to get through before I go to bed to-night," he said, as he went down stairs with the painter and his daughter; and so he had. The first hansom that he encountered conveyed him to that sepulchral mansion in Brunswick Square which he had chosen for his habitation; not because he particularly liked Brunswick Square, but because it was necessary for him to live somewhere. He let himself into the gaunt stone hall with his latch-key, and walked straight to the library at the back of this spacious mansion--a gloomy chamber lined with law-books, and provided with that species of furniture which may be seen exhibited by the merchants of Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. This dismal apartment was the retreat in which Mr. O'Boyneville spent the greater part of his home-life. He very frequently took his dinner on the library table, with his plate surrounded by papers, and an open brief propped up against his decanter of Manzanilla. To-night he found the red bag, which his clerk had brought from the Temple, waiting for him on the table. He did not open it quite at once. He did not pounce upon its contents as he had been wont to do. He sat for some minutes leaning back in his chair, with a smile upon his face--a dreamy smile, which was new to that eager, resolute countenance, so well known to the legal world for its hawk-like glances and insolent defiance. "My own sweet darling!" he thought; "and I shall have a wife and a home! Good Heavens! how many years of my life have I spent without ever dreaming of any such happiness! And now--now--I wonder that I could have lived so long as I have; I wonder that I could have lived without _her_." And then, after abandoning himself a little longer to this delicious reverie, he roused himself with an effort, and opened his bag. But as he took out the first handful of papers, he exclaimed with a sigh, "And yet, God knows, I wish I had never seen her. I went on so well before, and my mind was free for my work; and now----"