e purposes of his
travelling. Nothing could be more sad than the prospect of his
residence in London. Not that he was without friends there, for he
belonged to a fashionable club to which he could still adhere if it
so pleased him, and had all his old Oxford comrades to fall back upon
if that were of any service to him. But how is a man to walk into his
club who yesterday was known as his father's eldest son and the heir
to a baronetcy and twelve thousand a year, and who to-day is known
as nobody's son and the heir to nothing? Men would feel so much
for him and pity him so deeply! That was the worst feature of his
present position. He could hardly dare to show himself more than was
absolutely necessary till the newness of his tragedy was worn off.

Mr. Prendergast had taken lodgings for him, in which he was to remain
till he could settle himself in the same house with his mother. And
this house, in which they were all to live, had also been taken,--up
in that cheerful locality near Harrow-on-the-Hill, called St. John's
Wood Road, the cab fares to which from any central part of London are
so very ruinous. But that house was not yet ready, and so he went
into lodgings in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr. Prendergast had chosen
this locality because it was near the chambers of that great Chancery
barrister, Mr. Die, under whose beneficent wing Herbert Fitzgerald
was destined to learn all the mysteries of the Chancery bar. The
sanctuary of Mr. Die's wig was in Stone Buildings, immediately close
to that milky way of vice-chancellors, whose separate courts cluster
about the old chapel of Lincoln's Inn; and here was Herbert to sit,
studious, for the next three years,--to sit there instead of at the
various relief committees in the vicinity of Kanturk. And why could
he not be as happy at the one as at the other? Would not Mr. Die be
as amusing as Mr. Townsend; and the arguments of Vice-Chancellor
Stuart's court quite as instructive as those heard in the committee
room at Gortnaclough?

On the morning of his arrival in London he drove to his lodgings, and
found a note there from Mr. Prendergast asking him to dinner on that
day, and promising to take him to Mr. Die on the following morning.
Mr. Prendergast kept a bachelor's house in Bloomsbury Square, not
very far from Lincoln's Inn--just across Holborn, as all Londoners
know; and there he would expect Herbert at seven o'clock. "I will
not ask any one to meet you," he said, "because yo