s.

"I feel in such spirits to-day, George," cried Glencore at length,
"that I vote we go and pass the day at Richmond. We shall escape
the possibility of being bored by your acquaintance. We shall have a
glorious stroll through the fields, and a pleasant dinner afterwards at
the Star and Garter."

Only too well pleased at this sudden change in his friend's humor,
Harcourt assented.

The day was a bright and clear one, with a sharp, frosty air and that
elasticity of atmosphere that invigorates and stimulates. They both soon
felt its influence, and as the hours wore on, pleasant memories of
the past were related, and old friends remembered and talked over in a
spirit that brought back to each much of the youthful sentiments they
recorded.

"If one could only go over it all again, George," said Glencore, as they
sat after dinner, "up to three-and-twenty, or even a year or two later,
I 'd not ask to change a day,--scarcely an hour. Whatever was deficient
in fact, was supplied by hope. It was a joyous, brilliant time, when
we all made partnership of our good spirits, and traded freely on the
capital. Even Upton was frank and free-hearted then. There were some six
or eight of us, with just fortune enough never to care about money, and
none of us so rich as to be immersed in dreams of gold, as ever happens
with your millionnaire. Why could we not have continued so to the end?"

Harcourt adroitly turned him from the theme which he saw impending,--his
departure for the Continent, his residence there, and his marriage,--and
once more occupied him in stories of his youthful life in London, when
Glencore suddenly came to a stop, and said, "I might have married the
greatest beauty of the time,--of a family, too, second to none in all
England. You know to whom I allude. Well, she would have accepted me;
her father was not averse to the match; a stupid altercation with her
brother, Lord Hervey, at Brookes's one night--an absurd dispute about
some etiquette of the play-table--estranged me from their house. I was
offended at what I deemed their want of courtesy in not seeking me,--for
I was in the right; every one said so. I determined not to call first.
They gave a great entertainment, and omitted me; and rather than stay
in town to publish this affront, I started for the Continent; and out
of that petty incident, a discussion of the veriest trifle imaginable,
there came the whole course of my destiny."

"To be sure," said Harc