hin his own mind, not unfrequently.

But, nevertheless, he tried to love Alexandrina, or rather to
persuade himself that he loved her. If he could only get her away
from the de Courcy faction, and especially from the Gazebee branch
of it, he would break her of all that. He would teach her to sit
triumphantly in a street cab, and to cater for her table with a
plentiful hand. Teach her!--at some age over thirty; and with such
careful training as she had already received! Did he intend to forbid
her ever again to see her relations, ever to go to St. John's Wood,
or to correspond with the countess and Lady Margaretta? Teach her,
indeed! Had he yet to learn that he could not wash a blackamoor
white? that he could not have done so even had he himself been well
adapted for the attempt, whereas he was in truth nearly as ill
adapted as a man might be? But who could pity him? Lily, whom he
might have had in his bosom, would have been no blackamoor.

Then came the time of Lady de Courcy's visit to town, and Alexandrina
moved herself off to Portman Square. There was some apparent comfort
in this to Crosbie, for he would thereby be saved from those daily
dreary journeys up to the north-west. I may say that he positively
hated that windy corner near the church, round which he had to walk
in getting to the Gazebee residence, and that he hated the lamp which
guided him to the door, and the very door itself. This door stood
buried as it were in a wall, and opened on to a narrow passage which
ran across a so-called garden, or front yard, containing on each side
two iron receptacles for geraniums, painted to look like Palissy
ware, and a naked female on a pedestal. No spot in London was, as he
thought, so cold as the bit of pavement immediately in front of that
door. And there he would be kept five, ten, fifteen minutes, as he
declared--though I believe in my heart that the time never exceeded
three--while Richard was putting off the trappings of his work and
putting on the trappings of his grandeur.

If people would only have their doors opened to you by such
assistance as may come most easily and naturally to the work! I stood
lately for some minutes on a Tuesday afternoon at a gallant portal,
and as I waxed impatient a pretty maiden came and opened it. She
was a pretty maiden, though her hands and face and apron told tales
of the fire-grates. "Laws, sir," she said, "the visitors' day is
Wednesday; and if you would come then, there w