s before reading the morning paper. Then Miss Greeb would retire
to her own sitting-room and indulge in day dreams which she well knew
would never be realised. The romances she wove herself were even more
marvellous than those she read in her favourite penny novelettes; but,
unlike the printed tales, her romance never culminated in marriage. Poor
brainless, silly, pitiful Miss Greeb; she would have made a good wife
and a fond mother, but by some irony of fate she was destined to be
neither; and the comedy of her husband-hunting youth was now changing
into the lonely tragedy of disappointed spinsterhood. She was one of the
world's unknown martyrs, and her fate merits tears rather than laughter.

On the morning after his meeting with Berwin, the young barrister sat at
breakfast, with Miss Greeb in anxious attendance. Having poured out his
tea, and handed him his paper, and ascertained that his breakfast was to
his liking, Miss Greeb lingered about the room, putting this straight
and that crooked, in the hope that Lucian would converse with her. In
this she was gratified, as Denzil wished to learn details about the
strange man he had assisted on the previous night, and he knew that no
one could afford him more precise information than his brisk landlady,
to whom was known all the gossip of the neighbourhood. His first word
made Miss Greeb flutter back to the table like a dove to its nest.

"Do you know anything about No. 13?" asked Lucian, stirring his tea.

"Do I know anything about No. 13?" repeated Miss Greeb in shrill
amazement. "Of course I do, Mr. Denzil. There ain't a thing I don't
know about that house. Ghosts and vampires and crawling spectres live in
it--that they do."

"Do you call Mr. Berwin a ghost?"

"No; nor nothing half so respectable. He is a mystery, sir, that's what
Mr. Berwin is, and I don't care if he hears me commit myself so far."

"In what way is he a mystery?" demanded Denzil, approaching the matter
with more particularity.

"Why," said Miss Greeb, evidently puzzled how to answer this leading
question, "no one can find out anything about him. He's full of secrets
and underhand goings on. It ain't respectable not to be fair and above
board--that it ain't."

"I see no reason why a quiet-living old gentleman should tell his
private affairs to the whole square," remarked Lucian drily.

"Those who have nothing bad to conceal needn't be afraid of speaking
out," retorted Miss Greeb tartly. "And t