unseen and unnoticed in the crowd. But he
dismissed the notion. "I could not bear it," said
he; "and it would do no good to me or to any
one else if I could." Still, as he walked,
Mabel's face—so long unseen by his bodily eyes
—haunted his memory; and his fancy was
tormented by a fruitless endeavour to picture that
face with the strong glare of the stage-lights on
its modest beauty. It would not do. It was
like trying to find a steady outline amid the
images reflected in rippling water. There was
the form; but it moved and changed and melted,
and could be fixed by no effort of his. So
musing, he reached his brother's lodgings,
whither he was bound in fulfilment of the
promise given to his mother. Walter Charlewood
occupied a room on the second floor of a very
dirty, noisy lodging-house in a street near the
Strand. A tall, sooty-visaged brick house, the
unwashed blank ugliness of whose aspect seemed
to communicate itself mysteriously to each one
of the long line of maids-of-all-work who
successively toiled up and down its rickety staircase.
It was an evil-smelling, shabby, out-at-elbows
house, with a queer nomade population
of lodgers. Its atmosphere was dense and
heavy even in the brightest weather; and to a
fanciful mind it might have seemed that the roar
of mingled sounds—impossible to analyse—that
surged up around it from the great neighbouring
thoroughfare, contributed as much as the
smoke and fog to thicken and cloud the
ambient air. Nevertheless, Walter had preferred
its murky precincts to the clean little underdone
stucco-house at Barnsbury. Uninviting as was
his present abode, it did not offer the advantage
even of economy. "I hate cheap and nasty
things," said Penelope, "but Watty has ingeniously
found something at once ineffably nasty
and outrageously dear!"

However, the one compensation for all
drawbacks in Walter's mind was, "the situation."
"So central," said he; "one sees something of
life. One is get-at-able. One can drop in at
—at—different places, you know; and see a—a
—different fellows, you know. And, by Jove, that
lath and plaster shed at Barnsbury, overlooking
a confounded dismal desert full of broken
bottles, would have driven me melancholy mad in
a fortnight."

Clement found the street door open, and the
maid-of-all-work (the third who had held office
during Walter's brief tenancy), engaged in a
wrangle with the potboy, who held a spreading
bouquet of dirty pewter pots in his hand, and
clamorously persisted in demanding "them two
other quarts as was sent to the back parlours
last night."

"Is Mr. Charlewood in?" asked Clement,
interrupting the dispute. The slatternly servant
looked round with a saucy toss of her
dust-coloured cap. "Dunno, sir, I'm sure. Mr.
Charlewood? Two pair back. Fust door on
the left 'and as you go up stairs."

The girl had not been long enough in the
place to recognise Clement, or to know that he
stood in no need of her direction. He mounted
the stairs to his brother's room. The door was
closed, and he tapped on it with his fingers,
but receiving no answer, went in. There was
no one there, and the place looked littered and
neglected. Clement looked about him for some
means of writing a line to be left for his
brother when he should return, but found no
writing materials except a glass bottle thickly
encrusted with dried ink, and containing at the
bottom of it one drop of muddy black fluid.
There was a wooden penholder, but no pen.
Clement's face grew dark as he mentally
compared this shabby frouzy room with the neatness,
order, and bright cleanliness of the poor
home over which his mother and sister presided.
There were one or two personal luxuries in the
chamber, contrasting oddly with the surrounding
squalor. A massive leathern portmanteau
stood in one corner; it was loosely strapped,
but not locked, and the clothes within it were
peeping forth in disorder. Two silver-mounted
meerschaums were crossed over the mantelpiece,
and an inlaid dressing-case of elaborate
workmanship was open on the table, revealing
one or two ugly gaps where gold and crystal had
once glittered, and defiled with cigar-ashes
sprinkled over its velvet lining. Clement tore
a leaf from his pocket-book, and wrote on it in
pencil:

"Dear Watty. Sorry to miss you. Do come
to-morrow. I will call for you after banking
hours as I come from the office, and we can
walk to Barnsbury together. You must not
fail, Wat. Mother is fretting at not seeing
you so long.
                                                       "C. C."

This leaf he folded, and directed to his
brother, and placed it beneath a box of fusees
on the mantelpiece, thinking that in that
neighbourhood it could not fail to be observed. Then
he left the close room, and shut the door behind
him. As he came out on to the landing he
heard voices, and a woman descended from the
third story, speaking a voluble farewell to some
one out of sight. "Good-bye. You won't
disapint me of my gown for Sunday! Don't
you trouble to come down. I knows my way."
She was a very untidy woman, with a faded
smart bonnet, and rough light hair. She
jostled against Clement as she came down the
stairs with her eyes directed up towards the
unseen person whom she was addressing. She
had begun a sort of apology, when, looking at
Clement, she stopped short, started, clapped
her hands, and uttered a loud exclamation of
astonishment. "Angels and ministers!" cried
the untidy woman. "If it ain't Mr. Charlewood
in proprius persony!"

Clement looked at her in surprise. "That is
my name," said he. "Do you know me?"

"Well, I should rather think so, sir, an'
ever likely to! Don't you remember me?
Party of the name of Hutchins—New Bridge-street
—little Corda! Ah, there! You recollect
me now, don't you, sir?"