ditors grew importunate, and the arrangement of his affairs or
departure from his native land was an alternative now inevitable. The
month of April, which witnessed the arrival of the Temples and Lord
Montfort in England, welcomed also to London Miss Grandison and her
guests. A few weeks after, Ferdinand, who had evaded the journey with
his family, and who would not on any account become a guest of his
cousin, settled himself down at a quiet hotel in the vicinity of
Grosvenor-square; but not quite alone, for almost at the last hour
Glastonbury had requested permission to accompany him, and Ferdinand,
who duly valued the society of the only person with whom he could
converse about his broken fortunes and his blighted hopes without
reserve, acceded to his wish with the greatest satisfaction.

A sudden residence in a vast metropolis, after a life of rural
seclusion, has without doubt a very peculiar effect upon the mind. The
immense population, the multiplicity of objects, the important interests
hourly impressed upon the intelligence, the continually occurring
events, the noise, the bustle, the general and widely-spread excitement,
all combine to make us keenly sensible of our individual insignificance;
and those absorbing passions that in our solitude, fed by our
imagination, have assumed such gigantic and substantial shapes,
rapidly subside, by an almost imperceptible process, into less colossal
proportions, and seem invested, as it were, with a more shadowy aspect.
As Ferdinand Armine jostled his way through the crowded streets of
London, urged on by his own harassing and inexorable affairs, and
conscious of the impending peril of his career, while power and wealth
dazzled his eyes in all directions, he began to look back upon the
passionate past with feelings of less keen sensation than heretofore,
and almost to regret that a fatal destiny or his impetuous soul had
entailed upon him so much anxiety, and prompted him to reject the
glittering cup of fortune that had been proffered to him so opportunely.
He sighed for enjoyment and repose; the memory of his recent sufferings
made him shrink from that reckless indulgence of the passions, of which
the consequences had been so severe.

It was in this mood, exhausted by a visit to his lawyer, that he
stepped into a military club and took up a newspaper. Caring little for
politics, his eye wandered over, uninterested, its pugnacious leading
articles and tedious parliamentary