llowed victory; Nixon's wharf became a landmark to
bargemen; his power stretched abroad, his dusky fleets went outwards to
the sea, and inward by all the far reaches of canals. Lime, cement, and
bricks were added to his merchandise, and at last he hit upon the great
stroke--that extensive taking up of land in the north of London. Nixon
himself ascribed this _coup_ to native sagacity, and the possession of
capital; and there were also obscure rumours to the effect that some one
or other had been 'done' in the course of the transaction. However that
might be, the Nixons grew wealthy to excess, and Mary had often told her
husband of the state in which they dwelt, of their liveried servants, of
the glories of their drawing-room, of their broad lawn, shadowed by a
splendid and ancient cedar. And so Darnell had somehow been led into
conceiving the lady of this demesne as a personage of no small pomp. He
saw her, tall, of dignified port and presence, inclining, it might be,
to some measure of obesity, such a measure as was not unbefitting in an
elderly lady of position, who lived well and lived at ease. He even
imagined a slight ruddiness of complexion, which went very well with
hair that was beginning to turn grey, and when he heard the door-bell
ring, as he sat under the mulberry on the Sunday afternoon, he bent
forward to catch sight of this stately figure, clad, of course, in the
richest, blackest silk, girt about with heavy chains of gold.

He started with amazement when he saw the strange presence that followed
the servant into the garden. Mrs. Nixon was a little, thin old woman,
who bent as she feebly trotted after Alice; her eyes were on the ground,
and she did not lift them when the Darnells rose to greet her. She
glanced to the right, uneasily, as she shook hands with Darnell, to the
left when Mary kissed her, and when she was placed on the garden seat
with a cushion at her back, she looked away at the back of the houses in
the next street. She was dressed in black, it was true, but even Darnell
could see that her gown was old and shabby, that the fur trimming of her
cape and the fur boa which was twisted about her neck were dingy and
disconsolate, and had all the melancholy air which fur wears when it is
seen in a second-hand clothes-shop in a back street. And her
gloves--they were black kid, wrinkled with much wear, faded to a bluish
hue at the finger-tips, which showed signs of painful mending. Her hair,
plastered