How often an aching head or an aching heart is the follower of a gay night like that of the nineteenth of August, those who have much mingled with or much watched the world well know. In the commerce of life we are too apt to reverse the usual course of all reasonable traffic, and purchase with short present pleasure a vast amount of future grief and care. The bargain is a bad one, but made everyday; and even at the table, in the ball-room, and in many another scene, this same losing trade is going on, with the bitter day of reckoning on the morrow.
How is it with Algernon Grey, as he sits there in the large gloomy chamber, with his head leaning on his hand, his eyes gazing vacantly forth through the narrow window?