nd that----?"

"Really I don't know any more. But it's finally over; you may depend
upon that."

Southend lit a cigar with a satisfied air. On the whole he was glad to
hear the news.

"Staying much longer in town?" he asked.

"No, I'm going down to Iver's again in August."

"You want to see the end of it? Come, I know that's it!" He laughed as
he walked away.

Meanwhile Harry Tristram, unconscious of the efforts which were being
made to arrange his future, and paying as little attention as he could
to the buzz of gossip about his past, had settled down in quiet rooms
and was looking at the world from a new point of view. He was in
seclusion like his cousin; the mourning they shared for Addie Tristram
was sufficient excuse; and he found his chief pleasure in wandering
about the streets. The season was not over yet, and he liked to go out
about eight in the evening and watch the great city starting forth to
enjoy itself. Then he could feel its life in all the rush and the gayety
of it. Somehow now he seemed more part of it and more at home in it than
when he used to run up for a few days from his country home. Then Blent
had been the centre of his life, and in town he was but a stranger and a
sojourner. Blent was gone; and London is home to homeless men. There was
a suggestion for him in the air of it, an impulse that was gradually but
strongly urging him to action, telling him that he must begin to do. For
the moment he was notorious, but the talk and the staring would be over
soon--the sooner the better, he added most sincerely. Then he must do
something if he wished still to be, or ever again to be, anybody.
Otherwise he could expect no more than to be pointed out now and then to
the curious as the man who had once been Tristram of Blent and had
ceased to be such in a puzzling manner.

As he looked back, he seemed to himself to have lived hitherto on the
banks of the river of life as well as of the river Blent; there had been
no need of swimming. But he was in the current now; he must swim or
sink. This idea took shape as he watched the carriages, the lines of
scampering hansoms, the crowds waiting at theatre doors. Every man and
every vehicle, every dandy and every urchin, represented some effort, if
it were only at one end of the scale to be magnificent, at the other not
to be hungry. No such notions had been fostered by days spent on the
banks of the Blent. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" The question
h