but before he came it was concluded by those who had assembled in the small room that she had died from want of food; and such was the fact.  The body—­that of one not yet much past the middle of life, and with fair complexion and comely features—­was so emaciated, that you might have counted the ribs merely by the eye; and all those parts where the bones are naturally near the surface exhibited a sharpness which suggested the fancy, that as you may see a phosphorescent skeleton through the glow, you beheld in the candle-light the figure of death under the thin covering of the bones.  She realized, in short, the description which doctors give of the appearance of those unfortunate beings who die of what is technically called atrophia familicorum—­that Nemesis of civilisation which points scornfully to the victim of want, and then looks round on God’s bountiful table, set for the meanest of his creatures.  So we may indite; but rhetoric, which is useless where the images cannot rise to the dignity or descend to the humiliation of the visible fact, must always come short of the effect of the plain words that a human creature—­perhaps good and amiable and delicate to that shyness which cannot complain—­has died in the very midst of a proclaimed philanthropy, and within the limits of a space comprehending smoking tables covered with luxuries, and surrounded by Christian men and women filled with meat and drink to repletion and satiety.

Some such thoughts might have been passing through the minds of the assembled neighbours; and they could not be said to be the less true that a shrunk and partially-withered right arm showed that the doom of the woman had been so far precipitated by the still remaining effects of an old stroke of palsy.  And the gossip confirmed this, going also into particulars of observation,—­how she had kept herself so to herself as if she wished to avoid the neighbours,—­a fact which to an extent justified their imputed want of attention; how almost the only individual who had visited her was a peculiar being, in the shape of a very little man, with a slight limp and thin pleasant features, illuminated by a pair of dark, penetrating eyes.  For years and years had he been seen, always about the same hour of the day, ascending her stair, and carrying a flagon, supposed to contain articles of food.  Then the gossiping embraced the furniture and other articles in the room, which, however they might have been unnoticed before, had now assumed the usual interest when seen in the blue light of the acted tragedy:  the small mahogany table and the two chairs—­how strange that they should be of mahogany!—­and some of the few marrowless plates in the rack over the fireplace, why, they were absolute china! but above all, the exquisite little bureau of French manufacture, with its drawers, its desk, and pigeon-holes, and cunning slides—­what on earth was it doing in that room, when its value even to a broker would have kept the woman alive for months?  Questions these put by a roused curiosity, and perhaps not worth answer.  Was not she a woman, and was not that enough?