Abstain from visiting or communicating with her!  But if she visits and communicates with me, what then?  I can’t force my way into the house, but she can force her way out.  Does he imagine that she can be locked up in the nursery or put into the corner?’ So he argued with himself, and by such arguments he brought himself to the conviction that it would be well for him to answer Sir Marmaduke’s letter.  This he did at once before leaving the office of the D.R.

’250, Fleet Street,

20th April.

My Dear Sir Marmaduke Rowley

’I have just received your letter, and am indeed sorry that its contents should be so little favourable to my hopes.  I understand that your objection to me is simply in regard to the smallness and insecurity of my income.  On the first point I may say that I have fair hopes that it may be at once increased.  As to the second, I believe I may assert that it is as sure at least as the income of other professional men, such as barristers, merchants, and doctors.  I cannot promise to say that I will not see your daughter.  If she desires me to do so, of course I shall be guided by her views.  I wish that I might be allowed an opportunity of seeing you, as think I could reverse or at least mitigate some of the objections which you feel to our marriage.’

Yours most faithfully,

Hugh Stanbury.’

On the next day but one Sir Marmaduke came to him.  He was sitting at the office of the D. R., in a very small and dirty room at the back of the house, and Sir Marmaduke found his way thither through a confused crowd of compositors, pressmen, and printers’ boys.  He thought that he had never before been in a place so foul, so dark, so crowded, and so comfortless.  He himself was accustomed to do his work, out in the Islands, with many of the appanages of vice-royalty around him.  He had his secretary, and his private secretary, and his inner-room, and his waiting-room; and not unfrequently he had the honour of a dusky sentinel walking before the door through which he was to be approached.  He had an idea that all gentlemen at their work had comfortable appurtenances around them such as carpets, dispatch-boxes, unlimited stationery, easy chairs for temporary leisure, big table-space, and a small world of books around them to give at least a look of erudition to their pursuits.  There was nothing of the kind in the miserably dark room occupied ’by Stanbury.  He was sitting at a wretched little table on which there was nothing but a morsel of blotting paper, a small ink-bottle, and the paper on which he was scribbling.  There was no carpet there, and no dispatch box, and the only book in the room was a little dog’s-eared dictionary.’Sir Marmaduke, I am so much obliged to you for coming,’ said Hugh.  ’I fear you will find this place a little rough, but we shall be all alone.’

‘The place, Mr Stanbury, will not signify, I think’

’Not in the least—­if you don’t mind it.  I got your letter, you know, Sir Marmaduke.’