‘Heaven forbid all that, Charlson!’

’Well, well, ’twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, I suppose.  And now a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance’ sake!  And Mr. Barnet, she’s again free—­there’s a chance now if you care for it—­ha, ha!’ And the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow cheek and slanted his eye in the old fashion.

‘I know all,’ said Barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into the hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon in the outskirts of the town.

He reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a well-known house.  It was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs planted since the erection of the building that one would scarcely have recognized the spot as that which had been a mere neglected slope till chosen as a site for a dwelling.  He opened the swing-gate, closed it noiselessly, and gently moved into the semicircular drive, which remained exactly as it had been marked out by Barnet on the morning when Lucy Savile ran in to thank him for procuring her the post of governess to Downe’s children.  But the growth of trees and bushes which revealed itself at every step was beyond all expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the walks, and the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping plants as high as the first-floor windows.

After lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs, the visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he announced himself as ‘an old friend of Mrs. Downe’s.’

The hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as if visitors were rare.  There was a stagnation in the dwelling; it seemed to be waiting.  Could it really be waiting for him?  The partitions which had been probed by Barnet’s walking-stick when the mortar was green, were now quite brown with the antiquity of their varnish, and the ornamental woodwork of the staircase, which had glistened with a pale yellow newness when first erected, was now of a rich wine-colour.  During the servant’s absence the following colloquy could be dimly heard through the nearly closed door of the drawing-room.

‘He didn’t give his name?’

‘He only said “an old friend,” ma’am.’

‘What kind of gentleman is he?’

‘A staidish gentleman, with gray hair.’

The voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener greatly.  After a pause, the lady said, ‘Very well, I will see him.’

And the stranger was shown in face to face with the Lucy who had once been Lucy Savile.  The round cheek of that formerly young lady had, of course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern representative; a pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown hair, like morning rime on heather.  The parting down the middle was wide and jagged; once it had been a thin white line, a narrow crevice between two high banks of shade.  But there was still enough left to form a handsome knob behind, and some curls beneath inwrought with a few hairs like silver wires were very becoming.  In her eyes the only modification was that their originally mild rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than heretofore.  Yet she was still girlish—­a girl who had been gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty years instead of her proper twenty.