The interest which has been felt in his
career is over, and he is no longer the hero of an hour;--but he is a
free man, and may drink his gin-and-water where he pleases. Perhaps
a small admiring crowd may welcome him as he passes out into the
street, but he has become nobody before he reaches the corner. But it
could not be so with this discharged prisoner,--either as regarded
himself and his own feelings, or as regarded his friends. When
the moment came he had hardly as yet thought about the immediate
future,--had not considered how he would live, or where, during the
next few months. The sensations of the moment had been so full,
sometimes of agony and at others of anticipated triumph, that he had
not attempted as yet to make for himself any schemes. The Duchess of
Omnium had suggested that he would be received back into society with
an elaborate course of fashionable dinners; but that view of his
return to the world had certainly not occurred to him. When he was
led down from the dock he hardly knew whither he was being taken, and
when he found himself in a small room attached to the Court, clasped
on one arm by Mr.
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