Upon the mantelpiece there were other gifts of a similar kind:  a photograph frame made of curly shells, a mug with “A present from Greenwich” written across it in gold letters, a flesh-colored glass vase with yellow trimmings, a china cow with its vermilion ears cocked forward, lying down in a green meadow which just held it, and a toy trombone with a cord and tassels.  There were also several photographs of poor people in their Sunday clothes.  On the walls hung a photograph of Cardinal Newman, a good copy of a Luini Madonna, two drawings of heads by Burne-Jones, a small painting—­signed “G.  F. Watts”—­of an old tree trunk around which ivy was lovingly growing, and one or two prints.

The floor was polished and partially covered by three good-sized mats.  There was a writing-table on one side of the room with an ebony-and-gold crucifix standing upon it.  Opposite to it, on the other side of the room near the fireplace, was a bookcase.  On the shelves were volumes of Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Christina Rossetti, Newman’s “Dream of Gerontius” and “Apologia,” Thomas a Kempis, several works on mystics and mysticism, a life of St. Catherine of Genoa, another of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius Loyola’s “Spiritual Exercises,” Pascal’s “Letters,” etc., etc.  Over the windows hung gray-blue curtains.

Into this room Rosamund came that evening; she went to a wardrobe and began to take down a long sealskin coat.  Just then her maid appeared—­an Italian girl whom she had taken into her service in Milan when she had studied singing there.

“Shan’t I come with you, Signorina?” she asked, as she took the jacket from her mistress and held it for Rosamund to put on.

“No, thank you, Maria.  I’m going to church, the Protestant church.”

“I could wait outside or come back to fetch you.”

“It’s not far.  I shall be all right.”

“But the fog is terrible.  It’s like a wall about the house.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

She went to one of the windows, pulled aside the curtains, lifted the blind and tried to look out.  But she could not, for the fog pressed against the window panes and hid the street and the houses opposite.

“It is bad.”

She dropped the blind, let the curtains fall into place and turned round.

“But I’d rather go alone.  I can’t miss the way, and I’m not a nervous person.  You’d be far more frightened than I.”  She smiled at the girl.

Apparently reassured, or perhaps merely glad that her unselfishness was not going to be tested, Maria accompanied her mistress downstairs and let her out.  It was Lurby’s “evening off,” and for once he was not discreetly on hand.

Church bells were chiming faintly in this City of dreadful night as Rosamund almost felt her way onward.  She heard them and thought they were sad, and their melancholy seemed to be one with the melancholy of the atmosphere.  Some one passed by her.  She just heard a muffled sound of steps, just discerned a shadow—­that was all.