She looked up at last with a
little shiver.

"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you
have said to-night and to give you my answer in a month's time, will
you try and find Lady Garnett for me now?"

"Ah, Miss Masters--Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."

"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to
drop?"

"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and
see you?"

"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any
pleasure, you may come."

At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own,
with a silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded
himself, she had made no effective protest against the gesture.

CHAPTER XXVIII

At Lady Day, when the negotiations for the sale of his unprofitable
riverside domain were finally concluded, Rainham scarcely regretted
to find that an ample margin had been left before the new company
took possession; and he had still several months, during which he
might remain in occupation of his old habitation, and arrange
leisurely for the subsequent disposition of his books and more
intimate personal chattels. The dilapidated old house was to be
pulled down by the new owners (the plans for an extensive warehouse,
to be erected on the site of it, were already in the hands of the
builders), and this also was a fact from which Rainham derived a
certain satisfaction.

Insensibly, the spot had discovered a charm for him: the few rooms,
which had been his for so long, although, actually, so small a
proportion of his days had been spent in them, had gradually taken
the impress of his personality--the faded carpets, the familiar
grouping of pictures and books, the very shape of the apartment, and
the discoloured paper on the walls, expressed him in a way that
certainly no other abiding place, which might conceivably await him,
could ever do. And he took a dreary pleasure in the consideration
that, after he had gone, the rooms would know no other occupant;
that from the glazed and barred windows of the dreary building,
which was to take the place of the quaint old house, when it was
levelled to the ground, no person would ever gaze out, exactly as he
had done, at the white and melancholy river; in which, as he said to
himself fantastically, he had cast, one by one, as the days
lengthened, his interests, his passions, his desires.

Years before, by an accident of inheri