Mr Fred. Saxby stopped in front of the Royal Exchange one morning to buy a rose, and spent some time in selecting it. Red ones would not do; yellow he despised. He wanted a delicate white rose, with a dash of blush pink upon its petals; and when he had discovered one, he made no scruple about paying the flower-girl sixpence and carrying it off with the greatest care to deposit in a glass upon his desk, for reasons known only to himself. He had rather a busy morning in his close, cool, dark office, in a court out of Throgmorton Street--an office where the light of day had a struggle every morning to get down between two tall piles of building, and illumine the room, failing dismally seven or eight months out of the twelve, and leaving the stockbroker to the tender mercies of his gas company and the yellow flame that danced within a globe. Mr Saxby's room was "as clean as hands could make it,"--the housekeeper's words--but all the same it did not seem clean. There was a dingy look about everything, excepting the rose he bought every morning, and himself. In one part of the room was a tiny machine, untouched save by electricity, which went on, unwinding, inking its letters and stamping mile after mile of tape-like paper, informing the reader the while that the shares of this railway were up, of that down; that foreign stocks had made this change, consols were at that, and so on, and so on, while the occupant of the office paid not the slightest heed, but divided his attention between the _Times_ and the rose. Just in the midst of one of his most earnest inspections of the flower, during which he took a long soft inhalation of its odorous breath, a clerk entered with a card. "Miss Raleigh, sir." "Bless my heart!" ejaculated the stockbroker, hastily setting down the rose, for the act of smelling it had taken him down to a velvet lawn, sloping to the riverside; and upon that lawn he had seemed to see some one walking, wearing a similar rose; but it was not the lady who now entered, and of whom he had heard nothing since he warned her not to venture in the Cornish mine. "Good-morning, Miss Raleigh," he exclaimed, placing a chair. "I hardly expected to see you." "Why not?" said Aunt Sophia shortly. "Where did you expect I should go?" "I hope you are well, ma'am, and--Sir James and Lady Scarlett?" "No; I'm not well; I'm worried," said the lady. "Sir James and Lady Scarlett are both ill. Has--But never mind that now. Look here, Mr Saxby; you always give me very bad advice, and you seem determined not to let me get good interest for my money. Now, tell me this, sir. I have been receiving a great many circulars lately about different excellent investments; above all, several about gold mines in the north of India." "So I suppose, ma'am," said Mr Saxby rubbing his hands softly. "And I suppose you will say that they are not good; but here is one that I received yesterday which cannot fail to be right. I want some shares in that."