For a bachelor’s box it was remarkably roomy and comfortable. The housekeeper had evidently expected the guest, and led him upstairs to the room prepared for him. Declining her offer of refreshments, he was left alone, with exactly two hours on his hands before dinner-time. Part of the time he employed in writing that letter to Sara which has already been spoken of—the rest in meditations, not particularly agreeable, on his ‘present condition and future prospects.’ During the few hours he had been in England he had felt a distinctly stronger chagrin and disappointment at the idea of the utter loss of home than he had yet experienced. He could not understand nor account for this feeling, but it was there, and it was strong. He felt a sudden rush of indignation at the manner in which he had been all these years cheated and hoodwinked—and that by his father. This Mr. Bolton, who now reigned at the Abbey—who and what was he? The desire to visit the place once more grew stronger. Wild schemes for becoming rich, and having the place back again, ran riot in his mind—chimerical schemes, for, as each one rose and fell, he had to tell himself again and again that each was vanity. In England—in this part of England especially—the way in which men made fortunes was that of trade and successful speculation. He knew absolutely nothing of trade, and had not the remotest idea in what ‘speculation’ consisted. He saw no way at all of becoming rich. He saw the most probable and the best fate he could expect rise up and stand very clearly before his mental eyes—a secretaryship, clerkship, or something of that kind—neither of them avocations in which, as a rule, money is very rapidly accumulated. In the midst of these agreeable meditations the dinner-bell rang, and he went downstairs and found his host standing in the hall, looking out for him—a grey-haired, round-faced, pink-cheeked, elderly man, with a bland smile and an amiable expression. His appearance for some reason caused Jerome a kind of shock, he had unconsciously expected something so different. The climax of disillusion and commonplace appeared to have been reached when Mr. Netley, shaking hands with him and smiling benevolently, said he was sure Mr. Wellfield wanted his dinner. With his usual _sang froid_, Jerome, after a momentary pause, smiled slightly, and said ‘Yes,’ he was very hungry. They went into the dining-room, and here Mr. Netley volunteered the remark that he thought business had better wait until after dinner, to which Jerome again yielded a cordial assent, and they took their places—Jerome with an ever-deeper suspicion that somehow Mr. Netley was not—the only word he could think of was, ‘sharp’—that, for a solicitor of his standing, he was decidedly not very sharp. ‘Have you ever been in Manchester before?’ asked Mr. Netley. ‘As a child, I may. Never since I grew up; nor, indeed, in any place like it.’