'Can't think what they let such brutes into the place for!' he says to himself, looking over rather than at his dripping neighbour. 'Gad, what a comfort he would have been in the Row this morning when the dust was blowing! I can't imagine what has come to this place; one scarcely ever sees a soul one knows--a lot of foreigners and City people; not like the old stamp of men whom one could always rely upon finding in the stalls, or in the omnibus-box at the old house when the curtain for the ballet went up. They were a better style, those fellows; what they call the "old school,"--_vieille école, bonne école_,--and that sort of thing. Men go now to that reeking Alhambra, and think they enjoy it. What a queer thing it is to think that so few of the old set are left! There is one of them though, by Jove!' he muttered with a start. 'I haven't seen him for twenty years, but I'd lay my life that's Uffington.' The man by whom he was attracted looked up at the same instant, and their eyes met. The stranger's cheeks flushed, and for a moment he made as if he would turn away; but when he saw that Tom Lydyeard had left his stall he stopped, and the next moment they were shaking hands with more effusion than is usually shown in present society. He was a man of middle height, with small regular features, keen black eyes, thick black hair and moustache, small hands and feet, and a youthful, almost a boyish, figure. At a distance you might have guessed him five-and-twenty; and it was only when you looked closely at him that you noticed the lines round the eyes and deep indented furrows stretching from the nostrils to the corner of the mouth, which, like the ground-swell on the shore, told of the storms that had been. In the year '51 Nugent Uffington was looked upon as one of the likeliest young fellows in town, though he had nothing in the world beyond his handsome face, some two hundred a year, and his commission in the Grenadiers. Every one, however, was kind to the cheery good-looking lad; men lent him money and horses, women smiled upon him, and manoeuvring mothers, when they had no more daughters of their own to provide for, enlisted themselves in Nugent's service, and actually tried to procure for him some of the season's prizes. It was said at one time that he might have married Miss Amelia M'Craw, the prettier of the twin Scotch heiresses, who in their marriage gave up to the peerage what was meant for themselves. Good-natured Mrs. Waddledot Hepburn gave three dances (at the command of the Marchioness of Melton) in order that the young people might be thrown together; and old Waddledot himself used to lean across the railings by Apsley House regarding them caracoling in the distant Row with a 'Bless-you,-my-children!' kind of aspect. But, as fate would have it, in the month of June that year Mr. Mudge, whose father and grandfather had made an enormous fortune by converting old rags into shoddy-cloth