Westward always, through storm and shower, back to the haunts of his youth, went the wanderer and outcast, to see the red glow of cheery fires reflected on the plate-glass windows of his favourite clubs; to see the lamps in spacious reading-rooms lit early in the autumn dusk, and to watch the soft light glimmering on the rich bindings of the books, and losing itself in the sombre depths of crimson draperies.

To this poor worldly creature the agony of banishment from those palaces of Pall Mall or St.
James's-street was as bitter as the pain of a fallen angel.

It was the dullest, deadest time of the year, and there were not many loungers in those sumptuous reading-rooms, where the shaded lamps shed their subdued light on the chaste splendour of the sanctuary; so Captain Paget could haunt the scene of his departed youth without much fear of recognition: but his wanderings in the West grew more hopeless and purposeless every day.

He began to understand how it was that people were never at home when he assailed their doors with his fashionable knock.

He could no longer endure the humiliation of such repulses, for he began to understand that the servants knew his errand as well as their masters, and had their answers ready, let him present himself before them when he would: so he besieged the doors of St.James's and Mayfair, Kensington Gore and Netting Hill, no longer.