Sinopsis

I am an orphan. My father, who was a curate in the Church of England, died when I was sixteen years of age, leaving me totally unprovided for. I need not trouble the reader with the vicissitudes of fortune which left me, when I was entering my twenty-second year, a shopman in the establishment of Mr. John Conder, hosier and outfitter, of Holborn. I had been a clerk in a city firm; but the firm failed. For some months after that I was out of employment. At last I was compelled to enter Mr. Conder's service. I had been with him for two years, acting as salesman, errand-boy—anything, when one day an accident changed the whole course of my life. It was about three o'clock on a broiling July afternoon, 187-. I had to leave a parcel at the Langham Hotel, and another at a house in Wimpole Street. Having discharged my mission at the Langham Hotel, I crossed Portland Place and turned down Chandos Street to get into Cavendish Square. Chandos Street is a very quiet street; and as I turned the corner of the Langham Hotel the only person I could see before me was a tall young lady with a very graceful and aristocratic carriage, who was walking in the direction that I was going...