, while
his servant completed their travelling arrangements, he drove through
this very Square, though it lay by no means in a direct line for the
railway station to which he was bound. Those who believe in ghosts
affirm that a disembodied spirit haunts the place it best loved on
earth; and what are we but the ghosts of our former selves, when all
that constituted the pith and colouring and vitality of our lives has
passed away? Ah! Lady Macbeth's are not the only white hands from
which that cruel stain can never be removed. There are soft eyes and
sweet smiles and gentle whispers, enough in the world guilty of moral
manslaughter (I believe the culprits themselves call it "justifiable
homicide"), not entirely divested of that malice prepense which
constitutes the crime of murder! Happy the victims in whom life is not
completely extinguished, who recover their feet, bind up their wounds,
and undeterred by a ghastly experience, hazard in more encounters a
fresh assassination of the heart. Such fortitude would have afforded a
remedy to Dick Stanmore. "Wanted--a lady!" should have been the motto
emblazoned on his banner if ever he turned back into the battle once
more. Homoeopathy, no doubt, is the treatment for a malady like
that which prostrated this hapless sufferer,--homoeopathy, at first
distrusted, ridiculed, accepted only under protest, and in accordance
with the force of circumstances, the exigences of the position;
gradually found to soothe, to revive, to ameliorate, till at last it
effects a perfect and triumphant cure, nay, even shows itself powerful
enough to produce a second attack of the same nature, fierce and
virulent as the first. But, meanwhile, Dick Stanmore followed the
ghost's example, and drove sadly through Belgrave Square, as he told
himself, for the last--last time! Had he been an hour later, just one
hour, he might have taken away with him a subject for considerable
speculation, during his proposed travels in search of distraction.
This is what he would have seen.

A good-looking bad-looking man, with dark eyes and hair, sweeping a
crossing very inefficiently, while he watched the adjacent street with
an air of eager anxiety, foreign to an occupation which indeed seems
to demand unusual philosophy and composure of mind. Presently, Maud
Bruce, tripping daintily across the path he had swept clean, let
herself into the Square gardens, dropping her glove in the muddy
street as she took a pass-key from