l-looking, and with engaging
manners, he was the type of man of whom one would have prophesied great
things. His natural gaiety and address were more than enough to carry
him over the early stages of acquaintanceship, but subsequent meetings
were doomed to end in disillusion. His cheerful outlook on life would be
as much to your taste as ever; but the want of a definite aim and an
obvious inability to convert his talents into cash made you shake your
head doubtfully. A charming fellow, of course, but unpractical ... the
kind of man who is popular with all but match-making mothers.

He lived in two rooms in an obscure street off the Strand, and at the
time when we make his acquaintance he has just finished a meal that
stamps the lower middle classes and the impecunious--to wit, high tea.
For the benefit of gastronomers it may be stated that it included
herrings, a loaf of bread, some butter of repellent aspect, and
strawberry jam. Lionel has lighted his pipe and seated himself at the
window to enjoy as much of a June evening as can be enjoyable in a
London back street. He has not emitted three puffs of smoke before a tap
at the door heralds the entrance of his landlady.

Mrs. Barker, a woman of commanding presence and dressed in rusty black,
came into the room. She did not utter a word, not even the conventional
remark that it was a fine night or that the evenings would soon begin to
draw in now. With a funereal but businesslike demeanor she began to
remove the debris of the meal, at intervals giving vent to a rasping
cough or a malignant sniff. Of her presence Lionel seemed oblivious, for
he continued sitting with his back to the door, gazing with apparent
interest into the street. This, perhaps, was curious, for the street was
but a lane with little traffic and no features worthy of note. Nor was
the building opposite calculated to inspire the most sedulous observer,
being merely the blank wall of a warehouse. Not a single window relieved
the monotony, usually so painful to the artist or the adventurer. And
yet Lionel puffed at his pipe, gazing silently in front of him as if at
a masterpiece by Whistler.

When the landlady had transferred the tea-things to a tray, shaken the
crumbs from the table-cloth into the empty grate and folded it, she
nerved herself for a direct attack. Placing her arms akimbo--an attitude
usually denoting truculent defiance or a pleasurable sense of
injustice--she pronounced her lodger's name