in vague hints dropped mysteriously by an old servant, and little regarded by me at the time, as referring to matters which had happened before I was born.  I just reflected thus briefly and languidly on the narrative at the commencement of the letter; and then mechanically read on.  Except the passages which contained the exposure of Margaret’s real character, and those which described the origin and progress of Mannion’s infamous plot, nothing in the letter impressed me, as I was afterwards destined to be impressed by it, on a second reading.  The lethargy of all feeling into which I had now sunk, seemed a very lethargy of death.

I tried to clear and concentrate my faculties by thinking of other subjects; but without success.  All that I had heard and seen since the morning, now recurred to me more and more vaguely and confusedly.  I could form no plan either for the present or the future.  I knew as little how to meet Mr. Sherwin’s last threat of forcing me to acknowledge his guilty daughter, as how to defend myself against the life-long hostility with which I was menaced by Mannion.  A feeling of awe and apprehension, which I could trace to no distinct cause, stole irresistibly and mysteriously over me.  A horror of the searching brightness of daylight, a suspicion of the loneliness of the place to which I had retreated, a yearning to be among my fellow-creatures again, to live where there was life—­the busy life of London—­overcame me.  I turned hastily, and walked back from the suburbs to the city.

It was growing towards evening as I gained one of the great thoroughfares.  Seeing some of the inhabitants of the houses, as I walked along, sitting at their open windows to enjoy the evening air, the thought came to me for the first time that day:—­where shall I lay my head tonight?  Home I had none.  Friends who would have gladly received me were not wanting; but to go to them would oblige me to explain myself; to disclose something of the secret of my calamity; and this I was determined to keep concealed, as I had told my father I would keep it.  My last-left consolation was my knowledge of still preserving that resolution, of still honourably holding by it at all hazards, cost what it might.

So I thought no more of succour or sympathy from any one of my friends.  As a stranger I had been driven from my home, and as a stranger I was resigned to live, until I had learnt how to conquer my misfortune by my own vigour and endurance.  Firm in this determination, though firm in nothing else, I now looked around me for the first shelter I could purchase from strangers—­the humbler the better.

I happened to be in the poorest part, and on the poorest side of the great street along which I was walking—­among the inferior shops, and the houses of few stories.  A room to let was not hard to find here.  I took the first I saw; escaped questions about names and references by paying my week’s rent in advance; and then found myself left in possession of the one little room which I must be resigned to look on for the future—­perhaps for a long future!—­as my home.