rd arrived at the
very threshold which they had themselves reached.

"Ah! my father," exclaimed Sybil, and then with a faint blush of which
she was perhaps unconscious, she added, as if apprehensive Gerard would
not recall his old companion, "you remember Mr Franklin?"

"This gentleman and myself had the pleasure of meeting yesterday,"
said Gerard embarrassed, while Egremont himself changed colour and was
infinitely confused. Sybil felt surprised that her father should
have met Mr Franklin and not have mentioned a circumstance naturally
interesting to her. Egremont was about to speak when the street-door was
opened. And were they to part again, and no explanation? And was Sybil
to be left with her father, who was evidently in no haste, perhaps
had no great tendency, to give that explanation? Every feeling of an
ingenuous spirit urged Egremont personally to terminate this prolonged
misconception.

"You will permit me, I hope," he said, appealing as much to Gerard as to
his daughter, "to enter with you for a few moments."

It was not possible to resist such a request, yet it was conceded on the
part of Gerard with no cordiality. So they entered the large gloomy
hail of the house, and towards the end of a long passage Gerard opened a
door, and they all went into a spacious melancholy room, situate at the
back of the house, and looking upon a small square plot of dank grass,
in the midst of which rose a very weather-stained Cupid, with one arm
broken, and the other raised in the air with a long shell to its mouth.
It seemed that in old days it might have been a fountain. At the end of
the plot the blind side of a house offered a high wall which had once
been painted in fresco. Though much of the coloured plaster had cracked
and peeled away, and all that remained was stained and faded, still some
traces of the original design might yet be detected: festive wreaths,
the colonnades and perspective of a palace.

The wails of the room itself were waincsotted in pannels of dark-stained
wood; the window-curtains were of coarse green worsted, and encrusted
with dust so ancient and irremovable, that it presented almost a
lava-like appearance; the carpet that had once been bright and showy,
was entirely threadbare, and had become grey with age. There were
several heavy mahogany arm-chairs in the room, a Pembroke table, and an
immense unwieldy sideboard, garnished with a few wine-glasses of a deep
blue colour. Over the lofty unco