ly contrived to yield its share of pleasure.

"I wonder," muttered he, bitterly, to himself,--"I wonder when this
man preaches on a Sunday against wealth and its temptations, reminding
others that out of this world men take nothing, but go out upon their
new pilgrimage naked and poor, does he ever turn a thought to all these
things, so beautiful now, and with that vitality that will make them
beautiful years and years after he himself has become dust? I have
little doubt," added he, hurriedly, "that he says all this, and believes
it too. Here am I, after just as many determinations to eat no man's
salt, nor sit down to any board better than my own,--here I am to-day
creeping like a poor parasite to a great man's table,--ay, he is a great
man to _me!_

"How strange is the casuistry, too, with which humble people like myself
persuade themselves that they go into the world against their will;
that they do so purely from motives of policy, forgetting all the while
how ignoble is the motive they lay claim to.

"The old Roman moralist told us that poverty had no heavier infliction
in its train than that it made men ridiculous, but I tell him he is
wrong. It makes men untrue to themselves, false to their own hearts,
enemies to their own convictions, doing twenty things every day of their
lives that they affect to deem prudent, and know to be contemptible. I
wish my worthy host had left me unnoticed!"

He was at last at the door, and rang the bell with the impatient
boldness of one chafing and angry with himself. There was a short delay,
for the servants were all engaged in the dining-room, and Layton rang
again.

"Dr. Millar at home?" asked he, sternly, of the well-powdered footman
who stood before him.

"Yes, sir; he's at dinner."

"At dinner! I was invited to dinner!"

"I know, sir; and the doctor waited for half an hour beyond the time;
but he has only gone in this moment."

It is just possible, in Layton's then frame of mind, that he had
turned away and left the house, never to re-enter it, when a slight
circumstance determined him to the opposite. This was the footman's
respectful manner as he took the hat from his hand, and threw wide the
door for him to pass onward. Ay, it is ever so! Things too trivial and
insignificant for notice in this life are every hour influencing our
actions and swaying our motives. Men have stormed a breach for a smile,
and gone out in black despair with life just for a cold word or