t know we are here, they will tell her we
haven't returned--don't you see?"

It would have been absurd to contest the matter, after this. Amelius
followed her submissively to the farther end of the hall. There, she
opened the door of a long narrow room, built out at the back of the
house.

"This is my den," she said, signing to Amelius to pass in. "While we are
here, nobody will disturb us." She laid aside her bonnet and shawl, and
pointed to a box of cigars on the table. "Take one," she resumed. "I
smoke too, when nobody sees me. That's one of the reasons, I dare say,
why Regina wished to keep you out of my room. I find smoking composes
me. What do _you_ say?"

She lit a cigar, and handed the matches to Amelius. Finding that
he stood fairly committed to the adventure, he resigned himself to
circumstances with his customary facility. He too lit a cigar, and took
a chair by the fire, and looked about him with an impenetrable composure
worthy of Rufus Dingwell himself.

The room bore no sort of resemblance to a boudoir. A faded old turkey
carpet was spread on the floor. The common mahogany table had no
covering; the chintz on the chairs was of a truly venerable age. Some
of the furniture made the place look like a room occupied by a man.
Dumb-bells and clubs of the sort used in athletic exercises hung over
the bare mantelpiece; a large ugly oaken structure with closed doors,
something between a cabinet and a wardrobe, rose on one side to the
ceiling; a turning lathe stood against the opposite wall. Above the
lathe were hung in a row four prints, in dingy old frames of black wood,
which especially attracted the attention of Amelius. Mostly foreign
prints, they were all discoloured by time, and they all strangely
represented different aspects of the same subject--infants parted from
their parents by desertion or robbery. The young Moses was there, in
his ark of bulrushes, on the river bank. Good St. Francis appeared next,
roaming the streets, and rescuing forsaken children in the wintry night.
A third print showed the foundling hospital of old Paris, with the
turning cage in the wall, and the bell to ring when the infant was
placed in it. The next and last subject was the stealing of a child from
the lap of its slumbering nurse by a gipsy woman. These sadly suggestive
subjects were the only ornaments on the walls. No traces of books or
music were visible; no needlework of any sort was to be seen; no
elegant trifles; no