I
HE looked around him at the boarding-house parlour, his hat in his hand—with an appearance of having suddenly dashed in there, at the end of a long run, and stopped dead, in the midst of empty chairs—standing before the yellowed keyboard of an old "grand" piano, and facing the double doors that were closed like a partition at the end of the room. Her letter—Margaret's letter—received on the previous evening, had given him the address; and every thought of every minute, since, had been rushing toward this moment of his arrival breathlessly. The maid who had answered the door-bell had gone upstairs to tell her that he had come. He heard his heart beating in his ears, and the stuffy silence of the room seemed to be listening, with a ghostly attention, to the pulse of his emotion. He turned away, to face the machine-made lace curtains that hung like a faded and simpering coquetry before two over-dressed old windows—old windows that had once been the smiling eyes of a home and still made a pathetic pretence of welcoming the homeless boarder.
He heard the maid coming down the stairs. He waited for the step that should thrill him. "Well?" Margaret said, from the doorway.
She was smiling, with an air of having taken advan-
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