t. Altogether he was puzzled. At
eight-and-twenty one cannot be ready for everything; yet she had
implored him to consult nobody else, and decide for her himself. "I've
such trust in you," she had said, wiping away an incipient teardrop;
and, although Mr. Taylor told her that the individual was nothing and
the Office everything, he had been rather gratified. Thinking that a
turn in the open air might clear his brain and enable him better to
grapple with this very thorny question, he changed his cassock for a
long tailed coat, put on his wide awake, and, leaving the precincts of
St. Edward Confessor, struck across Park Lane and along the Row. He
passed several people he knew, both men and women: Mrs. Marland was
there, attended by two young men, and, a little farther on, he saw old
Lord Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a
parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank
from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine,
where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze.
But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a
crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What
had her feelings been or become towards the young man? Moreover, what
had she caused the young man's feelings to be for her? When he came to
think it over, Mr. Taylor discovered, with a shock of surprise, that on
all these distinctly material points the confession had been singularly
incomplete. He was ashamed of this, for, of course, it was his business
to make the confession full and exhaustive. He could only plead that,
at the moment, it had seemed thorough and candid--an unreserved
revelation. Yet those points did, as a fact, remain obscure.

"I wish I knew a little more about human nature," sighed Mr. Taylor: he
was thinking of one division of human nature, and it is likely enough
that he knew next to nothing of it.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder, and, with a start, he turned round.
A tall young man, in a new frock-coat and a faultless hat, stood by
him, smiling at him.

"What, Charlie, old fellow!" cried Taylor; "where do you spring from?"

Charlie explained that he was up in town for a month or two.

"It's splendid to meet you first day! I was going to look you up," he
said.

Sigismund Taylor and Charlie had been intimate friends at Oxford,
although Charlie was, as time counts there, very considerably the
juni