ng
away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold
like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face--he
was disposed alike to remorse and penitence.

The city in which he rambled was strange to him, and, according to his
fashion when absorbed in thought, he took any turning which suggested
itself, and lost himself in a labyrinth of byways. He had done the same
kind of thing in a hundred towns and cities without any result worth
mentioning, but just for once he was destined to find a purpose wrapped
up in the folds of this simple habit.

He was plodding along miserably enough, and did not know whether he were
at Naples or the North Pole, when a familiar voice awoke him from his
bitter reveries, and he looked about him to discover that he was between
a high wall and & hedge of aloes on a strip of grass which had no
pathway on it, and apparently led nowhere. He had a vague idea that he
had set out in this direction upon a footpath more or less distinct, and
making a _volte-face_, he saw that the path had come to a termination at
a door in the high wall a wicket's length behind him.

The voice he had heard was the voice of Gertrude, and the words it had
spoken were: 'Ah! but my dear friend, that inevitable, that unceasing
isolation of the mind!'

A swift pang of jealousy ran through him, and he listened with an almost
fierce anxiety. There was nothing in his nature to induce him to play
the eavesdropper, but he could not have refrained from listening just
then had it been to save his soul. Some deep undetermined murmur of a
voice in answer seemed to reach his ears, but they were drumming so to
the startled music of his heart that his sense failed to record it.
He went back swiftly and stealthily to the spot at which the pathway
terminated, and there he found an old green-painted door in a small
archway in the wall. It half drooped upon its rusty hinges, and across
the gap it left between its own rim and the postern, he had view enough
to tell him whither his rambling footsteps had led him. He was looking
at the terraced gardens in the rear of the Baroness's hotel, and whilst
he looked Gertrude herself floated into sight. Some trifle of a lace
mantilla was thrown over her head, and in her right hand she balanced
a parasol daintily between thumb and finger. Her companion was a man
apparently of middle age, frock-coated, silk-hatted, booted and gloved
as if for Rotten Row. He bor