CHAPTER I.

I had not seen Russell for many years—nearly a dozen. We were contemporaries in college, but many events kept us asunder. I spent a considerable time on the Continent; and when I returned, it so chanced that my visits to London were short and far between. I heard of him occasionally, but with no minute particulars as to his career. It was merely known to me that he had been called to the bar, and that the expected succession to a tolerably handsome inheritance, by the death of an uncle some few years earlier than it had been calculated upon, made him at first indifferent to his profession, and shortly estranged him from it altogether in everything but name. In fact, I knew scarcely anything about him, and for some four or five years had hardly heard his name mentioned.

Business with which it is needless to trouble any one but those immediately concerned, rendered it necessary that I should pass through London, last month, on my way to America. I had only four or five days to remain in town, and these were busily occupied.