his quiet corner at his favourite club. Nero, not admitted into the
club, patiently waited for him outside the door. The dinner over,
dog and man, equally indifferent to the crowd, sauntered down that
thoroughfare which, to the few who can comprehend the Poetry of London,
has associations of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of
the dead elder world can furnish,--thoroughfare that traverses what
was once the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left the site of
the palace that lodged the royalty of Scotland; gains, through a narrow
strait, that old isle of Thorney, in which Edward the Confessor received
the ominous visit of the Conqueror; and, widening once more by the Abbey
and the Hall of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of
earthly grandeur, amidst humble passages and mean defiles.

Thus thought Harley L'Estrange--ever less amidst the actual world around
him than the images invoked by his own solitary soul-as he gained the
bridge, and saw the dull, lifeless craft sleeping on the "Silent Way,"
once loud and glittering with the gilded barks of the antique Seignorie
of England.

It was on that bridge that Audley Egerton had appointed to meet
L'Estrange, at an hour when he calculated he could best steal a respite
from debate. For Harley, with his fastidious dislike to all the resorts
of his equals, had declined to seek his friend in the crowded regions of
Bellamy's.

Harley's eye, as he passed along the bridge, was attracted by a still
form, seated on the stones in one of the nooks, with its face covered
by its hands. "If I were a sculptor," said he to himself, "I
should remember that image whenever I wished to convey the idea of
Despondency!" He lifted his looks and saw, a little before him in the
midst of the causeway, the firm, erect figure of Audley Egerton. The
moonlight was full on the bronzed countenance of the strong public man,
with its lines of thought and care, and its vigorous but cold expression
of intense self-control.

"And looking yonder," continued Harley's soliloquy, "I should remember
that form, when I wished to hew out from the granite the idea of
Endurance."

"So you are come, and punctually," said Egerton, linking his arm in
Harley's.

HARLEY--"Punctually, of course, for I respect your time, and I will not
detain you long. I presume you will speak to-night?"

EGERTON.--"I have spoken."

HARLEY (with interest).--"And well, I hope?"

EGERTON.--"With effect, I