Grove Lane is a long acclivity, which starts from Camberwell suburban dwellings.  The houses vary considerably in size and Green, and, after passing a few mean shops, becomes a road of aspect, also in date,—­with the result of a certain picturesqueness, enhanced by the growth of fine trees on either side.  Architectural grace can nowhere be discovered, but the contract-builder of today has not yet been permitted to work his will; age and irregularity, even though the edifices be but so many illustrations of the ungainly, the insipid, and the frankly hideous, have a pleasanter effect than that of new streets built to one pattern by the mile.  There are small cottages overgrown with creepers, relics of Camberwell’s rusticity; rows of tall and of squat dwellings that lie behind grassy plots, railed from the road; larger houses that stand in their own gardens, hidden by walls.  Narrow passages connect the Lane with its more formal neighbour Camberwell Grove; on the other side are ways leading towards Denmark Hill, quiet, leafy.  From the top of the Lane, where Champion Hill enjoys an aristocratic seclusion, is obtainable a glimpse of open fields and of a wooded horizon southward.

It is a neighbourhood in decay, a bit of London which does not keep pace with the times.  And Nancy hated it.  She would have preferred to live even in a poor and grimy street which neighboured the main track of business and pleasure.

Here she had spent as much of her life as she remembered, from the end of her third year.  Mr. Lord never willingly talked of days gone by, but by questioning him she had learnt that her birthplace was a vaguely indicated part of northern London; there, it seemed, her mother had died, a year or so after the birth of her brother Horace.  The relatives of whom she knew were all on her father’s side, and lived scattered about England.  When she sought information concerning her mother, Mr. Lord became evasive and presently silent; she had seen no portrait of the dead parent.  Of late years this obscure point of the family history had often occupied her thoughts.

Nancy deemed herself a highly educated young woman,—­’cultured’ was the word she would have used.  Her studies at a day-school which was reputed ‘modern’ terminated only when she herself chose to withdraw in her eighteenth year; and since then she had pursued ‘courses’ of independent reading, had attended lectures, had thought of preparing for examinations—­only thought of it.  Her father never suggested that she should use these acquirements for the earning of money; little as she knew of his affairs, it was obviously to be taken for granted that he could ensure her life-long independence.  Satisfactory, this; but latterly it had become a question with her how the independence was to be used, and no intelligible aim as yet presented itself to her roving mind.  All she knew was, that she wished to live, and not merely to vegetate.  Now there are so many ways of living, and Nancy felt no distinct vocation for any one of them.