It was a house in a neat little terrace on the outskirts of the town; a house approached by a flight of steep stone steps of spotless purity, and a half-glass door, which opened at once into a bright airy-looking parlour, faintly perfumed with rose-leaves and lavender mouldering in the china vases on the mantelpiece.  Here Gilbert was introduced to Miss Long, a maiden lady of uncertain age, who wore stiff bands of suspiciously black hair under an imposing structure of lace and artificial flowers, and a rusty black-silk dress, the body of which fitted so tightly as to seem like a kind of armour.  This lady received Mr. Fenton very graciously, and declared herself quite ready to give him any information in her power about Miss Nowell.

It happened unfortunately, however, that her power was of a most limited extent.

“A sweeter young lady never lived than Miss Nowell,” she said.  “I’ve had a great many people occupying these apartments since my father’s death left me thrown upon my own resources.  I’ve had lodgers that I might call permanent, in a manner of speaking; but I never had any one that I took to as I took to Miss Nowell, though she was hardly with me three weeks from first to last.”

“Did she seem happy in her mind during that time?” Gilbert asked.

“Well, no; I cannot say that she did.  I should have expected to see a young lady that was going to be married to the man she loved much more cheerful and hopeful about the future than Miss Nowell was.  She told me that her uncle had not been dead many weeks, and I thought at first that this was the only grief she had on her mind; but after some time, when I found her very low and downhearted, and had won upon her to trust me almost as if I had been an old friend, she owned to me that she had behaved very badly to a gentleman she had been engaged to, and that the thought of her wickedness to him preyed upon her mind.  ’I don’t think any good can ever come of my marriage, Miss Long,’ she said to me; ’I think I must surely be punished for my falsehood to the good man who loved me so truly.  But there are some things in life that seem like fate.  They come upon us in a moment, and we have no strength to fight against them.  I believe it was my fate to love John Holbrook.  There is nothing in this world I could refuse to do for his sake.  If he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him as freely as I gave him my love.  From the first hour in which I saw him he was my master.’”

“This Mr. Holbrook was very fond of her, I suppose?”

“I daresay he was, sir; but he was not a man that showed his feelings very much.  They used to go for long walks together, though it was March and cold windy weather, and she always seemed happier when he brought her home.  He came every evening to drink tea with her, and I used to hear them talking as I sat at work in the next room.  She was happy enough when he was with her.  It was only when she was alone that she would give way to low spirits and gloomy thoughts about the future.”