pierce her self-engrossment.

"Is anything the matter, Miss Ethel?"

"No, no." Miss Ethel stood there, pressing her thin hands
together--striving to speak calmly. "It is only the people to look
over the house, I expect." Then she turned round and walked with her
head erect across the hall.

The door opened to disclose a short, thin, alert man with a taller,
well-nourished woman in handsome clothes, wearing a thick coating of
scented powder on her full cheeks and thick nose. Over her whole
person was written in characters for all to read the consciousness of
having plenty of money. It was new to her, and never for a moment
could she forget it; while her husband also fed _his_ satisfaction in
having plenty of money every time he looked at her. And yet they were
not unkindly people; ready to do a kindness if it did not take away
from them any of the luxuries, pleasures, delightful enviousness in
others less successful, which gradually would give them atrophy of the
soul.

So they thought good-naturedly enough, that though the old girl looked
a bit frosty and forbidding, that was no wonder--it must be a nasty jar
to have to turn out of a house where you had lived so many years. And
they made every allowance for the somewhat ceremonious manner in which
she conducted them through the rooms.

"Ah yes; when I used to see you come into the front seats at the
Flodmouth concerts with your respected father, and me in the shilling
gallery, I little thought---- But it's one down and the other come up
in these days, Miss Wilson. Same all the world over."

"Look, William!" said the wife, jogging her husband's arm. "That's a
beautiful old bureau." Then she turned to Miss Ethel. "I dare say you
have a lot of old furniture here that will be too big for your little
house. Couldn't we offer to relieve you of some of it? I could do
very well with that bureau and no doubt other things besides."

William whipped out his pocket-book. "Yes, Miss Wilson, you just say
what you want to part with, and I'll have the lot valued by anybody you
like. Pity to let the things go out of the house." He paused,
suddenly noticing the grey shade on Miss Ethel's face: then added
encouragingly: "You're quite in the fashion, you know, Miss Wilson.
Everybody's doing it, from dukes downwards."

"Of course," said Miss Ellen. [Transcriber's note: Ethel?]

Mrs. Bradford sat stolidly silent, taking no part in the affair, not
even when the l