CHAPTER I

Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning, carefully-banked-up fire.

The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare, was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for.  A casual stranger, more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of comfortable married life.  Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep leather arm-chair, was clean-shaven and dapper, still in appearance what he had been for many years of his life—­a self-respecting man-servant.

On his wife, now sitting up in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair, the marks of past servitude were less apparent; but they were there all the same—­in her neat black stuff dress, and in her scrupulously clean, plain collar and cuffs.  Mrs. Bunting, as a single woman, had been what is known as a useful maid.

But peculiarly true of average English life is the time-worn English proverb as to appearances being deceitful.  Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were sitting in a very nice room and in their time—­how long ago it now seemed!—­both husband and wife had been proud of their carefully chosen belongings.  Everything in the room was strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been bought at a well-conducted auction held in a private house.

Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years.  A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.  In fact, that arm-chair had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting.  She had wanted her husband to be comfortable after the day’s work was done, and she had paid thirty-seven shillings for the chair.  Only yesterday Bunting had tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping their arm-chair.

But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort, much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world.  So, on the walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded photographs—­photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting’s various former employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not unhappy servitude.