out that a Creole woman was singing to a group of
topers who sat by the fire in a corner of the room. She was
middle-aged, but sang sweetly, and was accompanied on the harp by an old
man:

"Oh, take me back to those I love!
Or bring them here to me!
I have no heart to rove, to rove
Across the rolling sea."

"Poor thing!" said the organist; "she has fallen on bad days to have so
scurvy a company to sing to. Let us move on."

They turned to the right, and came in a few minutes to the highroad.
Facing them stood a house which had once been of some pretensions, for
it had a porch carried on pillars, under which a semicircular flight of
steps led up to the double door. A street-lamp which stood before it
had been washed so clean in the rain that the light was shed with
unusual brilliance, and showed even at night that the house was fallen
from its high estate. It was not ruinous, but _Ichabod_ was written on
the paintless window-frames and on the rough-cast front, from which the
plaster had fallen away in more than one place. The pillars of the
porch had been painted to imitate marble, but they were marked with
scabrous patches, where the brick core showed through the broken stucco.

The organist opened the door, and they found themselves in a
stone-floored hall, out of which dingy doors opened on both sides. A
broad stone staircase, with shallow steps and iron balustrades, led from
the hall to the next story, and there was a little pathway of worn
matting that threaded its way across the flags, and finally ascended the
stairs.

"Here is my town house," said Mr Sharnall. "It used to be a coaching
inn called The Hand of God, but you must never breathe a word of that,
because it is now a private mansion, and Miss Joliffe has christened it
Bellevue Lodge."

A door opened while he was speaking, and a girl stepped into the hall.
She was about nineteen, and had a tall and graceful figure. Her warm
brown hair was parted in the middle, and its profusion was gathered
loosely up behind in the half-formal, half-natural style of a preceding
generation. Her face had lost neither the rounded outline nor the
delicate bloom of girlhood, but there was something in it that negatived
any impression of inexperience, and suggested that her life had not been
free from trouble. She wore a close-fitting dress of black, and had a
string of pale corals round her neck.

"Good-evening, Mr Sharnall," she said. "I hope you ar