and the day was so hot, that none of his usual haunts or occupations attracted him as it happened. After he had fortified himself with sherry and biscuits, he went rambling forth to spend his time in some misanthropical way till it should be time to return to Royalborough; but the best way that occurred to him for doing that was to take a walk. The Row was deserted; so, of course, it would have been foolish to go there; and he did not feel disposed to make calls; and lounging about the club,--or, indeed, anywhere where he should meet men and be questioned on all hands about himself and his brothers,--was a trial he was not equal to in his present frame of mind. So he went out to walk, which was a curious expedient. And of all places in the world to go to, turned his steps in the direction of the Regent’s Park, which, as everybody knows, is close to Fitzroy Square. I have never been able to understand what was Frank’s motive in setting out upon this walk. He knew very well,--none better,--that it was entirely out of the world. What a Guardsman could have to do in such a neighbourhood, except, indeed, to visit a wayward brother, nobody could have imagined; and now the wayward brother was gone. He said to himself that he did not mind where he went, so long as it was quite out of the way of meeting anybody; and yet on ordinary occasions Frank had no objection to meeting people. He went up Harley Street, scowling at those scowling houses, and then he went into the smiling, plebeian park, among all the nursery-maids. How funny it was, he said to himself, to notice the difference between this and the other parks, and persuaded himself that he was studying life on its humdrum side. He looked into the steady little broughams meandering round and round the dull terraces. Was it any pleasure to the old ladies to drive about thus, each in her box? And then he walked down the centre walk, where all the children were playing. The children were just as pretty as if they had been in Kensington Gardens. Mrs. Suffolk’s babies trotted past, with signs of old Rich’s two hundred and fifty pounds in their little summer garments, though Frank knew nothing of them,--and he kept stumbling over two pretty boys, who recalled to him some face he knew, and to whom he seemed an object of lively curiosity. They held close conversations, whispering with their heads together, and discussing him, as he could see, and turned up wherever he went, hanging about his path. ‘I tell you it ain’t Laurie’s ghost,’ one of them said audibly, at length. ‘He’s twice as tall, and he’s Laurie’s brother.’ ‘Hallo!’ Frank said, turning round upon them; ‘you are the little Severns, to be sure.’ No doubt it was the first time the idea had occurred to him. He must be close to Fitzroy Square, and being so, and Mrs. Severn having been such a friend of Laurie’s, it was his duty to call. Clearly it was his duty to call. She was a friend of the Riches, too. There was thus a kind of connexion