It was a favourable sign that Mr. Kendal communicated all these particulars without being plied with questions, and Albinia went on with the more spirit.

’No, I hope it may not be for long.  We have been holding a great council against the enemy, and I do hope that we have really done something.  No, you need not be afraid, I have not been there again, but we have been routing out the nucleus, and hope we may starve out the fever for want of victims.  You never saw such a swarm as we had to turn out.  There were twenty-three people to be considered for.’

‘Twenty-three!  Have you turned out the whole block?’

’No, I wish we had; but that would have been seventy-five.  This is only from those two tenements with one door!’

‘Impossible!’

’I should have thought so; but the lawful inhabitants make up sixteen, and there were seven lodgers.’

Mr. Kendal gave a kind of groan, and asked what she had done; she detailed the measures.

’Twenty-three people in those two houses, and seventy-five in the whole block of building?’

’Too true.  And if you could only see the rooms!  The windows that wont open; the roofs that open too much; the dirt on the staircases, and, oh! the horrible smells!’

‘It shall not go on,’ said Mr. Kendal.  ‘I will look over the place.’

‘Not till the fever is out of it,’ hastily interposed Albinia.

He made a sign of assent, and went on:  ’I will certainly talk to Pettilove, and have the place repaired, if it be at my own expense.’

Albinia lifted up her eyes, not understanding at whose expense it should be.

‘The fact is,’ continued Mr. Kendal, ’that there has been little to induce me to take interest in the property.  Old Mr. Meadows was, as you know, a successful solicitor, and purchased these various town tenements bit by bit, and then settled them very strictly on his grandson.  He charged the property with life incomes to his widow and daughters, and to me; but the land is in the hands of trustees until my son’s majority, and Pettilove is the only surviving trustee.’

The burning colour mantled in Albinia’s face, and almost inaudibly she said, ’I beg your pardon, Edmund; I have done you moat grievous injustice.  I thought you would not see—­’

’You did not think unjustly, my dear.  I ought to have paid more attention to the state of affairs, and have kept Pettilove in order.  But I knew nothing of English affairs, and was glad to be spared the unpleasant charge.  The consequence of leaving a man like that irresponsible never occurred to me.  His whole conscience in the matter is to have a large sum to put into Gilbert’s hands when he comes of age.  Why, he upholds those dens of iniquity in Tibbs’s Alley on that very ground!’

’Poor Gilbert!  I am afraid a large sum so collected is not likely to do him much good! and at one-and-twenty—!  But that is one notion of faithfulness!’