his daily comings and goings along a familiar and
quiet London street, where he lived inside the door marked eleven, though
not as householder. In age he was fifty at least, and his habits were as
regular as those of a person can be who has no occupation but the study
of how to keep himself employed. He turned almost always to the right on
getting to the end of his street, then he went onward down Bond Street to
his club, whence he returned by precisely the same course about six
o'clock, on foot; or, if he went to dine, later on in a cab. He was
known to be a man of some means, though apparently not wealthy. Being a
bachelor he seemed to prefer his present mode of living as a lodger in
Mrs. Towney's best rooms, with the use of furniture which he had bought
ten times over in rent during his tenancy, to having a house of his own.

None among his acquaintance tried to know him well, for his manner and
moods did not excite curiosity or deep friendship. He was not a man who
seemed to have anything on his mind, anything to conceal, anything to
impart. From his casual remarks it was generally understood that he was
country-born, a native of some place in Wessex; that he had come to
London as a young man in a banking-house, and had risen to a post of
responsibility; when, by the death of his father, who had been fortunate
in his investments, the son succeeded to an income which led him to
retire from a business life somewhat early.

One evening, when he had been unwell for several days, Doctor Bindon came
in, after dinner, from the adjoining medical quarter, and smoked with him
over the fire. The patient's ailment was not such as to require much
thought, and they talked together on indifferent subjects.

'I am a lonely man, Bindon--a lonely man,' Millborne took occasion to
say, shaking his head gloomily. 'You don't know such loneliness as mine
. . . And the older I get the more I am dissatisfied with myself. And to-
day I have been, through an accident, more than usually haunted by what,
above all other events of my life, causes that dissatisfaction--the
recollection of an unfulfilled promise made twenty years ago. In
ordinary affairs I have always been considered a man of my word and
perhaps it is on that account that a particular vow I once made, and did
not keep, comes back to me with a magnitude out of all proportion (I
daresay) to its real gravity, especially at this time of day. You know
the discomfort caused