In this room, locked away from all eyes but his own, lay certain relics which Thomas worshipped.  One was a photograph of a girl of fifteen.  At that age Alma Warbeck promised little charm, and the photograph allowed her less; but it was then that Thomas Bird became her bondman, as he had ever since remained.  There was also a letter, the only one that he had ever received from her—­’Dear Mr. Bird,—­Mamma says will you buy her some more of those jewjewbs at the shop in the city, and bring them on Sunday.—­Yours sincerely, Alma Warbeck’—­written when she was sixteen, seven years ago.  Moreover, there was a playbill, used by Alma on the single occasion when he accompanied the family to a theatre.

Never had he dared to breathe a syllable of what he thought—­’hoped’ would misrepresent him, for Thomas in this matter had always stifled hope.  Indeed, hope would have been irrational.  In the course of her teens Alma grew tall and well proportioned; not beautiful of feature, but pleasing; not brilliant in personality, but good-natured; fairly intelligent and moderately ambitious.  She was the only daughter of a dubiously active commission-agent, and must deem it good fortune if she married a man with three or four hundred a year; but Thomas Bird had no more than his twelve pounds a month, and did not venture to call himself a gentleman.  In Alma he found the essentials of true ladyhood—­perhaps with reason; he had never heard her say an ill-natured thing, nor seen upon her face a look which pained his acute sensibilities; she was unpretentious, of equal temper, nothing of a gossip, kindly disposed.  Never for a moment had he flattered himself that Alma perceived his devotion or cared for him otherwise than as for an old friend.  But thought is free, and so is love.  The modest clerk had made this girl the light of his life, and whether far or near the rays of that ideal would guide him on his unworldly path.

New shaven and freshly clad, he set out for the Warbecks’ house, which was in a near part of Brixton.  Not an imposing house by any means, but an object of reverence to Thomas Bird.  A servant whom he did not recognise—­servants came and went at the Warbecks’—­admitted him to the drawing-room, which was vacant; there, his eyes wandering about the gimcrack furniture, which he never found in the same arrangement at two successive visits, he waited till his hostess came in.

Mrs. Warbeck was very stout, very plain, and rather untidy, yet her countenance made an impression not on the whole disagreeable; with her wide eyes, slightly parted lips, her homely smile, and unadorned speech, she counteracted in some measure the effect, upon a critical observer, of the pretentious ugliness with which she was surrounded.  Thomas thought her a straightforward woman, and perhaps was not misled by his partiality.  Certainly the tone in which she now began, and the tenor of her remarks, repelled suspicion of duplicity.