of the block.  Others had attained to poverty by the same process, and had migrated to cheaper lodgings in blocks remote, expecting that a lucky turn of Fortune’s wheel would bring them back to fashionable life next year, as it most likely would.  The principal personages of this history had been radically affected by this lapse of time—­as will hereafter be shown—­with the single exception of Marcus Wilkeson.

For one year, life had passed tranquilly, uneventfully.  He had sought, and found, in his dear books, a panacea for that sickness of the heart which sometimes attacked him in his lonelier hours.  At such, times, he would repeat to himself these expressive lines of an old poet: 

     This books can do; nor this alone; they give
     New views of life, and teach us how to live;
     The grieved they soothe, the stubborn they chastise;
     Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise. 
     Their aid they yield to all; they never shun
     The man of sorrow, or the wretch undone. 
     Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
     They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd,
     Nor tell to various people various things,
     But show to subjects what they show to kings.

The end of the quiet, sad (but not unpleasantly sad) twelve months found Marcus, on a bright morning in the month of August, sitting at his window, with a favorite book on his knees, looking—­where he should not have looked so much—­at that window in the old house where the only tragedy of his life had been wrought.  As he gazed, like one fascinated by a spell, his features lengthened, and the habitually melancholy expression of his face became deepened and confirmed.

So wrapt was he in these unhappy self-communings, that he did not hear a vigorous “rat-tat-tat” on the door of the little back parlor.  A repetition of the performance aroused him, and to his call, “Come in,” Mash, the cook, presented herself.

“A woman at the door wishes to speak to you, sir, on important business, she says.  Shall I show her in, sir?” Mash laid stress on the word “woman,” in retaliation for the somewhat peremptory way in which the person in question had accosted her at the door.  The “Buttery and the Boudoir—­a Tale of Real Life,” afforded her a precedent on this point.

“Show in the lady,” said Marcus, wondering who she could be.

A tall, shapely person, dressed in deep black, and wearing a thick veil, was ushered into the room.  She bowed slightly, and took a seat which Marcus offered her, near the window, and then looked significantly at Mash, who lingered in an uncertain way about the door.

“You may shut the door, Mash,” said Marcus; and Mash did so with a little slam, intended to pierce the heart of the mysterious woman in black, for whom that domestic had, in one minute, conceived a mortal dislike.

The strange woman drew back her veil, and revealed a thin, pale face, which might have been handsome twenty years back.  “Do you remember having seen me before?”