they come? He wanted to escape from
this dark and dismal drive; these hanging laurels, the cold little
road, with its chilly lamps. An old and tottering woman, her nose nearly
touching her chin and her fingers in black mittens, opened at last and
led Olva into the very blackest and closest little hall that he had ever
encountered. The air was thick and musty with a strangely mingled smell
of burning wood, of faded pot-pourri, of dried skins. The ceiling was
low and black, and the only window was one of a dull red glass that
glimmered mournfully at a distance. The walls were hung with the
strangest things, prizes apparently that the late Dr. Craven had
secured in China--grinning heathen gods, uncouth weapons, dried skins of
animals. Out of this dark little hall Olva was led into a drawing-room
that was itself nearly as obscure. Here the ceiling was higher, but the
place square and dark; a deep set stone fireplace in which logs were
burning was the most obvious thing there. For the rest the floor seemed
littered with old twisted tables, odd chairs with carved legs, here a
plate with sea shells, here a glass case with some pieces of ribbon,
old rusty coins, silver ornaments. There were many old prints upon the
walls, landscapes, some portraits, and stuck here and there elaborate
arrangements of silk and ribbon and paper fans and coloured patterns.
Opposite the dark diamond-paned window was an old gilt mirror that
seemed to catch all the room into its dusty and faded reflections, and
to make what was old and tattered enough already, doubly dreary. The
room had the close and musty air of the hall as though windows were but
seldom opened; there was a scent as though oranges had recently been
eaten there.

At first Olva had thought that he was alone in the room; then when
his eyes had grown more accustomed to the light he saw, sitting in a
high-backed chair, motionless, gazing into the fire, with her fine white
hands lying in her lap, a lady. She reminded him, in that first vision
of her, of "Phiz's" pictures of Mrs. Clennam in _Little Dorrit_, and
always afterwards that connection remained with him. Her thin, spare
figure had something intense, almost burning, in its immobility, in the
deep black of her dress and hair, in the white sharpness of the outline
of her face.

How admirably, it seemed to him, she suited that room. She too may
have thought as she turned slowly to look at him that he fitted his
background, with the