’There’s Mr. Ackroyd.  I want just to speak a word to him.  If you’ll go on when we get up, I’ll soon overtake you.’

Mary acquiesced in silence.  Lydia, approaching, saw disappointment on the young man’s face.  He raised his hat to her—­an unwonted attention in these parts—­and she gave him her hand.

‘I’m going to chapel,’ she said playfully.

He had a sudden hope.

‘Then your sister’ll come out?’

’No, Mr. Ackroyd; she can’t to-night.  She’s having tea with Mrs. Grail.’

He looked down the street.  Lydia was impelled to say earnestly: 

’Some time, perhaps!  Thyrza is very young yet, Mr. Ackroyd.  She thinks of such different things.’

‘What does she think of?’ he asked, rather gloomily.

’I mean she—­she must get older and know you better.  Good-bye!  Mary Bower is waiting for me.’

She ran on, and Ackroyd sauntered away without a glance after her.

CHAPTER VI

DISINHERITED

When Thyrza left the two at tea and went downstairs, she knocked at the door of the front parlour on the ground floor.  The room which she entered was but dimly lighted; thick curtains encroached upon each side of the narrow window, which was also shadowed above by a valance with long tassels, whilst in front of it stood a table with a great pot of flowering musk.  The atmosphere was close; with the odour of the plant blended the musty air which comes from old and neglected furniture.  Mrs. Grail, Gilbert Grail’s mother, was an old lady with an unusual dislike for the upset of household cleaning, and as her son’s prejudice, like that of most men, tended in the same direction, this sitting-room, which they used in common, had known little disturbance since they entered it a year and a half ago.  Formerly they had occupied a house in Battersea; it was given up on the death of Gilbert’s sister, and these lodgings taken in Walnut Tree Walk.

A prominent object in the room was a bookcase, some six feet high, quite full of books, most of them of shabby exterior.  They were Gilbert’s purchases at second-hand stalls during the past fifteen years.  Their variety indicated a mind of liberal intelligence.  Works of history and biography predominated, but poetry and fiction were also represented on the shelves.  Odd volumes of expensive publications looked forth plaintively here and there, and many periodical issues stood unbound.

Another case, a small one with glass doors, contained literature of another order—­some thirty volumes which had belonged to Gilbert’s father, and were now his mother’s peculiar study.  They were translations of sundry works of Swedenborg, and productions put forth by the Church of the New Jerusalem.  Mrs. Grail was a member of that church.  She occasionally visited a meeting-place in Brixton, but for the most part was satisfied with conning the treatises of the mystic, by preference that on ‘Heaven and Hell,’ which she read in the first English edition, an old copy in boards, much worn.