about, he had been unconsciously dismissed by the Money-lender; and was standing on the pavement of Delahay Street-listening to the bolting, and barring, and putting up of the rusty chain within, by Bill the sweeper!—

Basil had not resisted Abednego's commands, that the boy should follow him down to open the door; for he thus secured an opportunity to enforce, by a second bribe, his charge to the uncouth page on no account to leave the invalid that night; but to be in readiness to receive the medicines and instructions he was proceeding to despatch from the shop of a neighbouring chemist.

CHAPTER II.

Thou shak'st, old man! Are thy limbs palsied?—No. 'Tis not old age,-'tis not disease,-'tis not

Inclemency of cold thus troubles thee!—

It is the ague of a tortured heart,

That not e'en time can med'cine!-MASSINGER.

NEVER had Basil Annesley installed himself before the fire of his lodgings in so desponding a mood as after his interview with Abednego. Not a single point or person whereon he could fix his thoughts with complacency, by way of relief?-After a visit to his mother, in which he had been made to feel himself an unwelcome guest,-after becoming an ear-witness to the ravings of

the old gardener, which he would have given worlds to efface from his memory, he had been spurned from the door which he had a right to approach as a benefactor, and where he would nevertheless have been proud to kneel in all the self-sacrificing humility of love!_

His mother he knew to be exposed to the most harassing and painful duties.The family of Verelst appeared to be distracted by some peculiar contrariety of fortune, of which he was unable to surmise the origin. And now, his benefactor, the man for whom, involuntarily, he entertained at once the greatest interest and greatest contempt, was suffering from a dangerous disease. In neither of the three cases could he exercise a beneficial influence. Gladly would he have dedicated all the means at his command, to alleviate the pangs of any of the three. But he was powerless as a child. All he could do was to sympathize in silence, and at a distance.

To say that no floating visions of the Duca di San Catalda mingled with his many vexations, would be disingenuous. It was doubtless no small enhancement to the miseries of his position that, while excluded from the house of Verelst, he believed another to be favoured with access;-another, rich, great, powerful,-able to confer favours fifty times greater than the poor services he had rendered, and perhaps to make them acceptable by graces of deportment, in which he felt himself to be lamentably deficient. In the depths of his reverie, poor Basil seemed to behold passing before him, as in a dream, all that was occurring at Barlingham,-all that was chancing in the drawing-room of Verelst,— all that was exercising a fatal empire in the miserable attic of A. O.!

So irritated was his mind by these perplexities, that he felt unequal to the exertion of dining at mess; and he accordingly determined to take an early dinner at the

Clarendon, and proceed to the play;-the resource of homeless men in London against the publicity of their Club or loneliness of their lodgings.

Now the play, in the month of January, is as habitual a resort of fashionable loungers as it is secure from their presence the moment the season commences. Scarcely had Basil taken a back seat in one of the public boxes, leaning back with folded arms, for the unmolested enjoyment of his reflections, when an unusual degree of movement and conversation in one of the private boxes attracted his notice, and he perceived that it was tenanted by a party of his brother officers,-Loftus, Blencowe, and Maitland, the old boy Carrington, and the young boy Wilberton,-precisely those whom others would have designated as his "friends."

This was vexatious; for Loftus had invited him to dine with them and join a party to the Adelphi, and they would now perceive that the engagement he had pleaded,