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the use of furniture which he had bought ten times over in rent during his tenancy, to having a house of his own.

None among his acquaintance tried to know him well, for hie manner and moods did not excite curiosity or deep friendship. He was not a man who seemed to have anything on his mind, anything to conceal, anything to impart. From his casual remarks it was generally understood that he was country- born, a native of some place in Wessex; that he had come to London ge a young man in a banking-honse, and had risen to a post of reaponsibility; when, by the death of his father, who had been fortunate in his investments, the son succeeded to an income which led him to retire from a business life somewhat early.

One evening, when he had been unwell for several days, Dr. Bindon came in after dinner from the adjoining medical quarter, and smoked with him over the fire. The patieni’s ailment was not such as to require much thought, and they talked together on indifferent subjects.

"I am a lonely man, Bindon—a lonely man,” Millberne took occasion to aay, shaking his head gloomity. “ You don’t know such loneliness as mine, ... And the older I get the more I am dissatisfied with myself. And to-day I have been, through an accident, more than usually haunted by what, above all other events of my life, causes that dissatisfaction—the recollection of an unfulfilled promise made some twenty years ago. In ordinary affairs I have always been considered a man of my word; and perhaps it is on that account that a particular vow I once made and did not keep comes back to me with a magnitude out of all proportion (I dare say) to its real gravity, especially at this time of day. You know the discom-