And why then was he there? Because in his unreasoning folly he did not know what step to take, or what step not to take. There are men whose energies hardly ever carry them beyond looking for the thing they want. She might see him from the window, and come to him. I do not say that he thought that it would be so. I fancy that he never thought at all about that or about anything. If you lie under a tree, and open your mouth, a plum may fall into it. It was probably an undefined idea of some such chance as this which brought him against the railings in the front of Mr. Palliser's house; that, and a feeling made up partly of despair and partly of lingering romance that he was better there, out in the night air, under the gas-lamps, than he could be elsewhere. There he stood and looked, and cursed his ill-luck. But his curses had none of the bitterness of those which George Vavasor was always uttering. 
But in his unreasoning folly he did not know what step to take. He stood there with an undefined feeling that she might see him from the window, and come to him; in the way that if you lie under a tree long enough, a plum may drop into your mouth. He stood and looked, and cursed his ill-luck, though with none of the bitterness of George Vavasor's oaths. 