little of the pleasure of emerging from the silence of solitude, of seeing and being seen, of finding friends from whom she had been long parted, and a dazzling vision of life which was all the brighter from being partially forgotten, and never very perfectly known. From where she sat she could see the glare of the carriage lamps, and now and then some glimpses of the persons within--a lady’s white toilette surging up at the window or a brilliant shirt front looking almost like another lamp inside. It amused her to watch that stream flow on. And then there came over her a dark shadow, the vision of the man who had been so young and so full of life when she saw him last, and who was so death-like and fallen now. The thought chilled her suddenly to the heart. She drew back from the window, and wrapped herself in a shawl, with the shudder of a cold which was not physical but spiritual. In the midst of all that ceaseless loudness of life and movement and pleasure, and of the vision which had visited her own brain of lighted rooms, and animated faces, and brilliant talk--to drop back to that wreck of existence, the helpless man leaning upon his servant’s arm, bundled up like a piece of goods, unresisting, compelled to submit to those cares which were an indignity, yet which were necessary to very existence! The echo came back to Evelyn’s heart. If there was in her mind, who in reality cared for none of these things, a little sentiment of loneliness as she saw the stream of life go by, what must there be in his, to whom society was life, and who was cut off from all its pleasures? Her imagination followed him to the prison of his weakness, his melancholy home, with this imperative servant who tended and ruled all his movements, for his sole society. God help him! What a condition to come to, after all the experiences of his life! Should she ever meet him again, she had asked herself, partly with a vaguely formed wish of saying some word of kindness to so great a sufferer, partly with a shrinking reluctance to give herself the pain of looking upon his humiliation again? But it was almost as great a shock as on the first meeting to see him coming along the park as she walked to Lady Leighton’s next day. He was being drawn along in his wheeled chair by the man who had bundled him up so summarily on the previous occasion. Evelyn would have hurried on, but he held out his hand appealingly, and even called her name as she endeavoured to pass. “Won’t you stop and speak to me?” he said. It was impossible to resist that appeal. She stood by him looking down upon his ashy countenance, the loose lips and half-open mouth which babbled rather than talked, and which it required an effort at first to understand. “Will you sit down a little and talk?” he said. “It’s a pleasure I don’t often have, a talk with an old friend. Sit there, and I’ll have my chair drawn beside you. I hope you won’t think yourself a victim, as I fear some of my friends do----”