The Albe­marle and the Lud­gate came into Salis­bury Square to­gether on the first of Decem­ber, under Kit’s arm, in a frost; and Kit, who had car­ried them from the Temple gate with­out open­ing either, which for Kit was a kind of Lent, put them down among the cups and stood over the teapot warm­ing his hands, and said that he would read the Mor­timers first, be­cause the Warden would keep.

“The Warden al­ways keeps,” said Lucy. “Like salt fish.”

Kit read the eighth num­ber aloud, as he had read every num­ber since the sum­mer: stand­ing, with his back to the fire, in the voice he kept for Mr. Pel­ham’s opin­ions, which was a little deeper than his own. He read Mr. Mor­timer through quarter-day. He read him into the house­keeper’s room, where no Mor­timer had set foot in eight num­bers, and out of it again, a poorer and a quieter man; and he read the sen­tence near the end with­out stop­ping at it, be­cause he did not know that it had been writ­ten for any­body:

“There,” said Kit, with deep sat­is­fac­tion. “That’s Hindley. That’s the count­ing-house all over. Pel­ham says no gen­tle­man would know there was a book.”

“Pel­ham has never kept one,” said Lucy.

Mrs. Lyd­iard, who was turn­ing the cuffs of Kit’s second shirt, stopped

with the needle half through, and looked across the table at her elder daugh­ter for about the time it takes to draw a thread; and then she drew it, and went on to the next. Clem­ency, who had been look­ing at the fire, went on look­ing at it. It was a very good fire. It had been paid for on the tenth of No­vem­ber, in sil­ver, and she knew to a lump how long it would last.

When they had gone to bed she took the Albe­marle through to the back room, where it was cold enough to see her breath, and read the thir­teenth num­ber of the Warden in her shawl, with her feet on the fender of a grate that had not been lit since March.

It began where the twelfth had left him, at Lud­low, at Mar­tin­mas; and for a page it was as cold as it had ever been: the March in frost, the host­ages coun­ted, the King’s let­ter read twice and answered once. Then, on the second page, with­out the least warn­ing, the Warden got up from the high table and went out by a door that was not his, and down a stair that was not his either, out of the light:

She read it, and put the book down on her knee, and sat for some time with­out read­ing any­thing.

He had gone down. She had sent a kit­chen-maid to the foot of the area steps in the sev­enth num­ber, to look up; and in the same weeks, by an­other stair, he had gone down: not to argue, as he had ar­gued about the foot­man, nor to fin­ish her sen­tence for her, as he had fin­ished the keeper’s, but only to go and look. She could not tell whether he had read the sev­enth be­fore he wrote it. The dates would allow it, and the sen­tence did not need it. Nobody in the Albe­marle had ever been below stairs be­fore. Mr. Wray would say, she sup­posed, that the Warden had caught the Mor­timers’ com­plaint, and would find a dis­ease of the lower or­ders to com­pare it to. She did not care what Mr. Wray said. She sat in the cold with the Warden in his kit­chen, and was nearer to being happy than she had been since Bread Street, and that she did not trust it in the least.

For she knew the man who had writ­ten it.

She had not known that she knew it until she put the book down. Then it was there, all of it, as a sum is there when one stops adding and looks at the foot of the column. A gen­tle­man on his own pave­ment, who had heard

her say that she read the Albe­marle for the Warden, and had looked down into his own area, as though some­thing there wanted his at­ten­tion. I am told that the gen­tle­man is not paid at all. She had taken it for Albe­marle Street gos­sip; and so it was, but only one man in Albe­marle Street could have known it with­out being paid to for­get it. Then he is either a fool or very rich. And he had said, I be­lieve he is both, with­out the least ex­pect­a­tion of being be­lieved; and she had taken it for a joke at some other man’s ex­pense, be­cause it had not oc­curred to her that a gen­tle­man could say such a thing of him­self on his own pave­ment, and mean it. And then Kit, at sup­per: a Mr. Kinross, who sits in the garden of an af­ter­noon mark­ing his books with a pen­cil. Nobody marks a maga­zine in pen­cil but the man who must an­swer for it. And the thing fol­ded back under the pen­cil, on the bench in August, had been, she would have laid money on it now, her own fourth num­ber; for some­body had told Mr. Wray where the rail­ings went, and she had seen that long face shut when she said so.

She did not want it to be true. She went over it as she would have gone over a bill that came to more than she ex­pec­ted, item by item; and every item was cor­rect, and the total was the Warden of the Marches, who had stood on his own pave­ment in Gros­venor Square and de­fen­ded the Mor­timers to her with more warmth than any­body had ever spent on them, and who did not know who she was.

That was the only com­fort in it, and she held on to it. He did not know who she was. He knew a young per­son who had come about a place and had not taken it; he knew her boots, which half Gros­venor Square knew by now; and he knew a sen­tence she had not fin­ished. He did not know that the Mor­timers had a name, or that the name was Lyd­iard, or that the Lydiards lived two pair of stairs up over a law-sta­tioner’s in Salis­bury Square, where a man who sat in the Temple garden might have thrown a stone and hit them, if he had been the kind of man who threw stones.

The ninth num­ber lay in the drawer, fin­ished, nine days be­fore it was wanted. She took it out. She read it through to the last leaf but one, where Miss Mor­timer walks in St. James’s Park with her maid on a Decem­ber morn­ing, to be out of the house while the house­keeper’s book is gone over; and she sat for a long while with the pen, while the candle went down; and then she wrote in, be­tween the maid’s chil­blains and the water, a single sen­tence, and did not cross it out.

She put him in St. James’s Park be­cause she would not put him in the Temple. The Temple would have had him in a sen­tence: Mr. Pel­ham by the Sat­urday, the garden by the Monday, and Lord Ashcombe by the soup; and she did not choose that any­body in Lon­don should have him from her. In St. James’s Park he was nobody, and every gen­tle­man in town had a maga­zine. Only one reader would know the pen­cil.

She did not ask her­self why she had writ­ten it. She knew, as she gen­er­ally knew things, to the farth­ing; and she did not choose to add it up.

*  *  *  *  *

Mr. Kinross was in Albe­marle Street by eight, as on the first of every month; and Mr. Rad­cliffe had the sale for him on a half-sheet by the door, as on the first of every month, and gave it in the same voice. It was down forty on No­vem­ber.

“The kit­chen,” said Mr. Rad­cliffe. “I told you.”

“You told me twenty pounds.”

“I told you more than twenty pounds, and I was right.”

Twenty pounds. Mr. Kinross had heard the sum lately in an­other voice, on his own pave­ment, and it had stopped short be­fore the end, as though it had heard it­self. He put that away with the rest, and no­ticed that the place where he put such things was get­ting full.

Mr. Rad­cliffe put the half-sheet under the ink­stand. “There are let­ters. Two cler­gy­men have writ­ten to say that a Warden of the March would never have gone into a kit­chen, and a lady in Clapham to say that she is glad he did, and will he now go into the nurs­ery. I have answered none of them. My suc­cessor may an­swer them all. Have you found him?”

“No.”

“You have three weeks and three days.” Mr. Rad­cliffe took up his hat, which he did not need, since he was not going any­where yet. “The Lud­gate is on the table. Bal­dock has had it prin­ted after all. I do not know how, and I do not ask.”

Mr. Kinross read the eighth num­ber of the Mor­timers stand­ing at the win­dow with his hat still on, as Mr. Rad­cliffe read things for the price. He had read every num­ber since May. He had read the last three in a man­ner he would not have liked to de­scribe to any­body: the sev­enth twice at a sit­ting, on the first of No­vem­ber, and again at night, by the lib­rary fire, with the door shut. And he had not known, until his hand went out to the table that

morn­ing be­fore his hat was off, that he had been wait­ing a month for the eighth.

He found the sen­tence near the end, and knew it at once, be­cause it had his own words in it.

He read it again. He had writ­ten, on a night in Sep­tem­ber, with more pleas­ure than he had felt in a sen­tence for a year, that the women of the March men­ded what their lords broke, for noth­ing at all; and he had thought it the truest thing in the Warden, and the kind­est, and had been a little proud of the kind­ness. And the Author of the Mor­timers had read it, and had gone to the house­keeper’s book, and had sent him in the ac­count.

It was per­fectly just. It was so ex­actly just that he laughed aloud, in Mr. Rad­cliffe’s front of­fice, at a quarter past eight in the morn­ing, which nobody in that of­fice had ever heard him do; and Mr. Rad­cliffe, at the desk with his hat, looked up, and con­sidered him with in­terest, and then looked down again and wrote some­thing in the mar­gin of the let­ter from Clapham.

He went out into Albe­marle Street with the Lud­gate under his arm, which he had not meant to take, and stood on the step in the frost; and he thought, as he had thought at some hour of every day for a fort­night, of a young per­son in men­ded boots who had stood under his coal-plate and looked up.

He had not meant to think of her. He was not a man who thought about young per­sons; he had been told so by his aunt, at in­ter­vals, as one tells a man that his house wants paint­ing. But he had found, since the fif­teenth of No­vem­ber, when she stood on his pave­ment in the dusk and talked to him of rail­ings, that a great many things led to her. Boots led to her, and he looked at them now in the street as other men look at faces. The Albe­marle led to her, since she read it for one sen­tence, and he had not yet dis­covered which. His own area led to her, so that he could not go up his own steps with­out look­ing down into it; and the some­body who kept the ac­count led to her this morn­ing, by a road he could not have mapped. Mrs. Pratt said that she had lied, and Mrs. Pratt, who had not known how to spell fri­cas­see, was a judge of lying. She had lied about her let­ters. She had very likely lied about the rest of it; and there was one place in Lon­don where the rest of it could be had for the ask­ing.

Fen­wick had given him the dir­ec­tion on the Monday, and had not asked why it was wanted.

The regis­ter-of­fice was in Oxford Street, over a stay­maker’s, up a stair that smelt of wet um­brel­las: a long room with a fire at one end and a bench down one side, on which six

young women sat in their best bon­nets with their char­ac­ters in their laps, and looked at him as he came in, and then, as one, at the floor. At the other end, be­hind a table and a large book, sat a stout woman in a cap with a pen be­hind her ear, who looked at him and did not look at the floor at all.

“Mr. Kinross’s,” she said, be­fore he had given his name. “Your but­ler wrote to say you might call, and he writes a very good hand. Gros­venor Square, north side. Kit­chen-maid, four­teen guineas, tea and sugar found.” She opened the book and turned back through it, wet­ting her thumb. “Entered on the Tues­day, the fifth of Oc­to­ber, in the morn­ing. We sent Sarah Pike on the Thursday, and she cried. We sent Ann Rudd on the Sat­urday, and Mrs. Pratt sent her back. We sent two more in the week after, and the place is filled since the twen­ti­eth of No­vem­ber by a girl from Uxbridge that Mrs. Pratt found for her­self, which I don’t hold against her.”

“And on the Tues­day?”

“The Tues­day, sir?”

“The fifth. A young per­son came to my house on the Tues­day af­ter­noon, about the place, and was taken below.”

The woman put her fin­ger on the page, and ran it down, and ran it down again; and then she shut the book, which made a sound in that room like a door.

“Nobody on the Tues­day, sir. The place wasn’t on the book till el­even, and I’d nobody fit to send till the Thursday.”

“Then who was she?”

“Not one of mine.” She said it with­out the least un­cer­tainty. “Mine come with their char­ac­ters in their pock­ets, and I know every one of them by the time they’ve sat on that bench a week. If there was a young per­son at your door on the Tues­day, sir, nobody sent her.” She looked at him over the book with a kind of pro­fes­sional pity. “Who­ever she was, she sent her­self.”

He went down the stair that smelt of um­brel­las and out into Oxford Street, and stood on the pave­ment among the carts.

She had not come for the place. She had sent her­self down his area steps, un­asked and in her own boots, to stand under his coal-plate and look up; and the sev­enth num­ber of the Mor­timers, in which a kit­chen-maid stood under a coal-plate and looked up, had come out on the first of No­vem­ber. Nobody wanted a kit­chen seen from below but the per­son who meant to write one.

He knew what that meant. He had known it, after a fash­ion, since the af­ter­noon in No­vem­ber when he wrote three words on a slip at the Temple and did not strike them out; and he stood in Oxford Street with the slip in his

pocket-book, where he had car­ried it since he took it out of his drawer at the Temple a fort­night be­fore, and found that he would go a long way round rather than take it out. For if she had gone and looked for her­self, then the best thing in Lon­don was being writ­ten in boots men­ded at the toe, by a young woman whom he had taken for a kit­chen-maid on his own pave­ment and asked what her place paid; and he had a great deal more to an­swer for than a mar­gin.

So he went round. He told him­self that she had gone and looked on the Author’s be­half: that the Author, who­ever he was, had some­body to go and look for him, a clerk, a wife, any woman who went and looked for a man. It was not a good ar­gu­ment. It was a Temple ar­gu­ment, and he knew it for one, and held on to it, be­cause it let him walk. And he found, be­tween a dray and a hack­ney-coach, that what it let him walk into was worse; for he did not know what she was to the Author, and he minded it ex­tremely; and since he had never in his life minded what any woman was to any man, and had sup­posed him­self as in­cap­able of it as some men are of whist­ling, he was so much as­ton­ished that he walked as far as the Pan­theon be­fore he re­membered that he had meant to take a coach.

For a fort­night after that Mr. Kinross was on his own pave­ment at half past three on most af­ter­noons, for reas­ons that he gave him­self with great clear­ness and did not ex­am­ine: a let­ter to post, the light, the frost on the rail­ings, which wanted look­ing at. Nobody came along the north side at half past three but the people who came to look at the rail­ings, and the muffin-man with his bell. And on the ninth af­ter­noon the kit­chen win­dow went up under his feet.

“She’ll not come, sir,” said Mrs. Pratt, to the rail­ings. “Not a third time. Not that one.”

The win­dow went down again be­fore he could ask her how she knew; which was as well, since he could not have asked it with­out ad­mit­ting the ques­tion.

*  *  *  *  *

By Fri­day the tenth Mr. Bal­dock’s house was half in crates.

Clem­ency came up the stairs at nine with the ninth num­ber under her cloak, and found the front of­fice stripped to its shelves and the shelves to their dust, and Mr. Bal­dock sit­ting in the middle of it at the one desk that was going with him, among thirty years of the Lud­gate tied up in string by the year, like a man sit­ting among his own tomb­stones and find­ing them, on the whole, well cut.

“Twelve guineas,” he said. “To the Author, on de­liv­ery. It is the last time I shall say it in this room, and I find I have grown at­tached to the sen­tence.”

He coun­ted it out on the desk, and did not ask her to count it after him, and she did not. “There will be a Lud­gate on the first of Janu­ary. Tuck­ett will print it on con­di­tion that he is paid be­fore he sets a line, which is the first time in my life that I have paid a printer be­fore he did any­thing whatever; and he was so much af­fected that he asked to have it in writ­ing.”

“And after Janu­ary?”

“After Janu­ary there will be a Lud­gate when I have a house to put it in.” He took off his spec­tacles, and looked at them, and put them on again, which was not his way of chan­ging the sub­ject but of de­clin­ing to. “They are mak­ing a law at West­min­ster this fort­night by which every man who pub­lishes any­thing cheap and often is to find sureties for his good be­ha­viour, like a drunken man be­fore the ma­gis­trates. The Lud­gate comes out too sel­dom to be caught by it. It is the first ad­vant­age I have ever found in being monthly.”

He weighed the ninth num­ber in his hand, as he al­ways did; and then he opened it at the first leaf and looked at it for a mo­ment with­out read­ing it, and shut it again.

“I shall not read it here,” he said. “I shall read it in proof, at home, on Sunday, with my feet on the fender. I have never done that with a num­ber of the Lud­gate. I was al­ways read­ing the next.” He put it in the drawer, and did not lock the drawer, since there would shortly be noth­ing in the house worth lock­ing. “Rad­cliffe has your terms.”

“And?”

“He takes them. Twelve guineas, no name, the tenth of every month. He has un­der­lined the fourth.” Mr. Bal­dock found the let­ter, and gave it to her across the desk. “He says that he has never in five-and-twenty years had a con­trib­utor who would not dine, and that he looks for­ward to the nov­elty. He would like the Feb­ru­ary num­ber, and he asks for the Author’s an­swer by the tenth of Janu­ary.”

Clem­ency read it. It was very short, and it did not waste any­thing, and at the end of it, below the sig­na­ture, in the same small com­mer­cial hand, Mr. Rad­cliffe had writ­ten: The Author’s eighth was worth the twelve. She gave it back.

“The Author is con­sid­er­ing it.”

“The Author has a month.” Mr. Bal­dock fol­ded the let­ter into his pocket-book. “Gedge will be here at ten for the copy. You need not stay for him.”

But she stayed; and Gedge came at ten, with his hat in his hand and a Meth­od­ist’s opin­ion of crates, and bowed to the lady by the win­dow, as he al­ways did, with­out ask­ing who she was; and took the ninth num­ber away under his coat to be set, with a sen­tence in it about a gen­tle­man by the

water, which he would set, she sup­posed, as he set everything, let­ter by let­ter, in the order in which it came, with­out the least idea that it had been writ­ten for any­body.

Mr. Bal­dock walked down the stairs with her.

“The back-room door,” he said, at the foot of them, “still does not shut. I have told the land­lord so. It is the only thing in this house that I shall leave him with pleas­ure.”

She went home by Lud­gate Hill with twelve pounds twelve shil­lings in her stock­ing-purse, of which twelve pounds would go to the land­lord at Lady Day, now that Christ­mas was in hand, and twelve shil­lings to the coal-mer­chant on the Sat­urday; and she was a little ashamed of how little it now sur­prised her to carry it.

*  *  *  *  *

On the Tues­day night, which was the night be­fore the din­ner, Kit woke at one o’clock and could not tell why, and lay listen­ing; and then he knew why, be­cause there was a line of light under the back-room door, and he had seen it there be­fore.

He had seen it a good many times since the sum­mer. He had told him­self that it was let­ters to Bread Street, and then that it was ac­counts, and then, in Oc­to­ber, that it was noth­ing that con­cerned him; and he had very nearly be­lieved the last, be­cause Kit could be­lieve al­most any­thing that let him go back to sleep. Tonight it was colder than it had been all the winter, and the frost had got into the pas­sage and was stand­ing on the in­side of the win­dow at the end of it; and he got up, in his stock­ings, and took his great­coat off the nail, and went in.

She was not writ­ing. She was sit­ting with the pen laid down and both hands round the candle, as one holds a cup; and she looked up at him with a face that he had never seen on her, which was the face of some­body who has been caught being happy and is ready to deny it.

Kit put the great­coat round her shoulders with­out a word. It smelt of the Temple: of sea-coal and ink and the river, and of Mr. Pel­ham’s snuff, which got into everything. She did not take it off.

“Pel­ham says it’ll freeze hard by Christ­mas,” said Kit. “He says the river will go above the bridge.”

“Does he?”

“He’s gen­er­ally wrong.” Kit looked at the desk, and at the paper on it, which was face down, and at the second fin­ger of her right hand, which had ink on it, as his own had; and he looked away again, at the frost on the win­dow. He had wanted since he was twelve years old to be the one in the fam­ily who knew things first. He found, stand­ing in the door­way of the

back room at one o’clock in the morn­ing in his stock­ings, that there was one thing he would rather be told than find out; and he went back to bed with­out ask­ing it, which was the hard­est thing he had done since he was twelve, and for which nobody would ever thank him, be­cause nobody would ever know.

She sat in his coat until the candle was out.

*  *  *  *  *

The turtle ar­rived in Gros­venor Square at seven o’clock on the morn­ing of the fif­teenth, from a West India ship in the river by way of a dealer in the City, in a cart, and alive; and at a quarter to eight, when Mr. Kinross came out on his steps, it was on his pave­ment, going east along his rail­ings at the pace of a creature that has been told it is to be din­ner and has not agreed, with one of Lord Ashcombe’s foot­men walk­ing be­hind it, un­cer­tain of the etiquette.

Mr. Kinross, who had been wait­ing a fort­night for some­body to come along his rail­ings, stood back and let it pass.

They were five at table that even­ing: his lord­ship at the head, with Mr. Hindley, his Mor­timers, on his right hand, and Mr. Dalgleish, his Warden, on his left, as he had planned it since Oc­to­ber; Mr. Tillotson at the foot, with the Albe­marle and the Lud­gate be­side his plate, marked with slips of paper like briefs at the as­sizes; and Mr. Kinross a little down the side on which Mr. Dalgleish sat, where he could see both of them with­out being looked at, to make up the table and say noth­ing.

Mr. Dalgleish was pinker than in Oc­to­ber, and more resigned. He had the look of a man who has been ac­cused of a crime so often that he has begun to take an in­terest in the par­tic­u­lars. Mr. Hindley had a new coat, which did not yet fit him across the shoulders and had very likely not been paid for, and the twice-soled boots, which no coat could have hid­den; and he had got rid of his cold and kept his voice, and he played it on his lord­ship, who liked it, like a good in­stru­ment hired for the even­ing.

They had the turtle.

“Turtle,” said his lord­ship, “is the only soup in which a man may be cer­tain what he is get­ting. Tillotson, that is a thing Frois­sart might have said.”

Mr. Tillotson be­lieved that Frois­sart had said some­thing very like it.

Mr. Kinross, who had met the turtle that morn­ing and had liked it, did not care for the soup.

“Now,” said his lord­ship, when the plates had gone round, “I have had a no­tion since Oc­to­ber, and I mean to have it out be­fore the fish. Every man who writes a book knows what he meant by it, and will not tell you. Very well. I shall not ask him. I shall ask the other fel­low. Dalgleish, you shall tell me what Hindley means,

and Hindley, you shall tell me what Dalgleish means; and Kinross shall hear you both, and say noth­ing, and tell me af­ter­wards which of you was lying. Tillotson, the Albe­marle. The twelfth. The place I marked.”

Mr. Tillotson found the place, and read it, in the voice in which he read the les­sons; and Mr. Kinross heard his own sen­tence go round Lord Ashcombe’s table, not for the first time, past the salt and the epergne, to the end, where the women of the March men­ded what their lords broke, for noth­ing at all.

“There, Hindley,” said his lord­ship. “For noth­ing at all. What does he mean by it?”

Mr. Hindley had come pre­pared, Mr. Kinross saw, for a good many things that even­ing, but not for this; and he looked at his soup, and then across the table at Mr. Dalgleish; and then he put down his spoon.

“I’m a plain man, my lord,” he said, “and I’ll tell you plain. He means it kindly, and he’s wrong. Noth­ing’s men­ded for noth­ing. I’ve been in a mill since I was twelve years old. Some­body mends it, and some­body’s paid, or some­body’s owed; and if nobody’s paid, there’s a book some­where with the debt in it, and it’ll come in.” He was quite ser­i­ous. It was the first thing he had said all even­ing, Mr. Kinross thought, in his own voice and not in the hired one. “In my trade a thing’s paid on de­liv­ery, or it isn’t paid at all.”

Mr. Kinross felt some­thing that was like a stair missed in the dark: a small drop, with noth­ing under it, and the foot com­ing down again on the next step be­fore the mind has understood that there was a step to miss. He did not know what it was. He looked at Mr. Hindley, and Mr. Hindley was look­ing at his lord­ship.

“There, Dalgleish!” His lord­ship was de­lighted. “He has answered you out of the count­ing-house. Now de­fend your­self.”

“I am a con­vey­an­cer, my lord,” said Mr. Dalgleish un­hap­pily.

“Then de­fend your­self as a con­vey­an­cer.”

Mr. Dalgleish con­sidered the sen­tence, which was not his, with the grav­ity of a man who has been handed an­other man’s deed and told to find the flaw in it be­fore the fish; and Mr. Kinross, watch­ing him, was ashamed, as he had been ashamed in Oc­to­ber, and could do noth­ing about it, as he had done noth­ing then.

“I can only say,” said Mr. Dalgleish at last, “that if a thing is done for noth­ing at all, it is a vol­un­tary con­vey­ance, and good be­tween the parties. But it may be set aside by the cred­it­ors.”

Mr. Hindley took up his spoon again, and put it down. Nobody no­ticed it but Mr. Kinross, who had spent a

month no­ti­cing things that nobody no­ticed, and did not yet know what to do with them.

“Set aside by the cred­it­ors!” His lord­ship re­peated it with rel­ish, as a phrase he meant to keep. “Now the other. Tillotson, the Lud­gate. Find me some­thing.”

“There is no need to look far, my lord,” said Mr. Tillotson, who had found it on the Tues­day and had been wait­ing ever since to be asked. “The Mor­timers have the very words. For noth­ing at all. At the end of the eighth num­ber.”

“The very words?” His lord­ship looked from one side of his table to the other, and was en­chanted. “Then they write to each other! Dalgleish, Hindley, you are in cor­res­pond­ence, the pair of you, in the pub­lic prints, and you never said a word of it to me. Read it, Tillotson.”

Mr. Dalgleish and Mr. Hindley looked at each other across the table, as two men look who have just been told that they are cous­ins; and Mr. Tillotson read the sen­tence about Mr. Mor­timer and the house­keeper’s book; and Mr. Kinross, who knew it by heart, and had laughed at it aloud in Albe­marle Street, sat with his hands in his lap and heard it read in a chap­lain’s voice at a peer’s table, and thought that it was the best an­swer he had ever been given, and that he did not know to whom he owed it.

“Dalgleish,” said his lord­ship. “What does Hindley mean?”

“If the ac­count was rendered, my lord,” said Mr. Dalgleish, who had found his feet, “and Mr. Mor­timer did not ob­ject to it within a reas­on­able time, it would be an ac­count stated, and he would be bound by it.”

“Bound! Hindley, do you hear? He says you have bound the Warden.”

“That’s what I meant, my lord,” said Mr. Hindley, in the hired voice again, and very com­fort­ably. “The ac­count comes in. It al­ways does. And I’ll tell your lord­ship some­thing about that num­ber that’s not in it.” He leaned back. “It was paid for. Twelve guineas, on the tenth, on de­liv­ery, and not a day’s credit asked or given. There’s not three lit­er­ary men in Lon­don can say as much.”

His lord­ship laughed, and said that there was not one; and the fish came in.

It pays on de­liv­ery.

He heard it in her voice, on his own pave­ment, in the dusk, with an onion com­ing up out of the area and a barouche going round the Square for the third time: It pays on de­liv­ery. — On de­liv­ery of what? — Of whatever is wanted, sir, on the day it is wanted.

Mr. Kinross understood, be­tween the turtle and the fish, that he had been told.

He had been told on his own pave­ment, a month be­fore, by a young woman in men­ded boots, what the Mor­timers paid and when; and he had not heard it, be­cause his cook had told him she was a kit­chen-maid, and a kit­chen-maid’s place does not pay on de­liv­ery. A place in the City. It is not a quiet one. Pater­noster Row was not quiet. Twelve guineas, on the tenth: on the day it is wanted. She had given him the terms. She had given them to his face, in the voice in which she might have given him the price of coals, and then she had curt­seyed to his cook and gone away along the north side at the pace of a woman walk­ing a little ahead of weather; and he had stood on his pave­ment and sup­posed that she be­longed to some­body.

She be­longed to nobody. There was no Author on whose be­half she had gone and looked. There was a young woman who had wanted to see a kit­chen from below, and had gone down el­even steps in Gros­venor Square to see it, be­cause that was the only way to know; who had priced his book to the pound on his own pave­ment, be­cause she priced everything, and the price was the whole of her art; and who had sent him in the ac­count. She was paid twelve guineas on the tenth, and she went in boots men­ded at the toe; and he had not been able to put the two to­gether, be­cause nobody had ever sent him the bill. He had spent a fort­night jeal­ous of a man who did not exist, be­cause it was easier than the truth; and the truth had come in with the fish. And he found, now that the man had gone, that he was not re­lieved, as he would have ex­pec­ted, but frightened, which he would not.

He looked at his plate. The fish had come, and he did not know what it was. He was aware of his hands, which were not per­fectly steady, and he put them under the table.

“Kinross!” said his lord­ship. “You’re very quiet. Quieter than com­mon, which I’d not have thought it pos­sible to be.”

“I was think­ing of the turtle, sir,” said Mr. Kinross. “I be­lieve we had met.”

This was a great suc­cess. His lord­ship had the whole story out of him, and then told it him­self, bet­ter: how the creature had got clean out of the cart, and gone along the north side as if it had read the sev­enth num­ber of the Mor­timers and meant to see the rail­ings for it­self; and Mr. Hindley laughed, in the hired voice, and Mr. Tillotson laughed be­cause his lord­ship had, and Mr. Dalgleish laughed with the par­tic­u­lar re­lief of a man who has heard a joke that has noth­ing to do with him. Mr. Kinross ate a little of the fish. It was tur­bot, he dis­covered later.

At the time it might have been any­thing.

“And on the tenth of Janu­ary,” said his lord­ship, warm­ing to his even­ing, “I shall be in the Row at nine o’clock in the morn­ing to see it de­livered. I have never seen a book de­livered. I have seen a calf. Hindley, you shall not de­liver with­out me.”

Mr. Hindley’s face did not change. But Mr. Kinross, who had begun that even­ing to look at faces as he had lately looked at boots, saw that it was the face of a man who has been told that the bailiffs will dine with him; and he saw, which was worse, what would come up a pub­lisher’s stairs in the Row at nine o’clock on the tenth of Janu­ary, Bal­dock’s if Bal­dock still had stairs, or Bald­win’s if Rad­cliffe had his way, with the num­ber under its cloak, and find a peer of the realm on the land­ing, and Mr. Tillotson with him, and Mr. Hindley, white, be­tween them.

“I could ac­com­pany your lord­ship,” said Mr. Tillotson.

“If you go to the Row at nine on the tenth, sir,” said Mr. Kinross, “Mr. Wray will have it by noon.”

His lord­ship stopped with his glass half-way.

“Wray?”

“He has friends in every cof­fee-house in the Row.” Mr. Kinross did not look at Mr. Hindley. He did not look at any­body. He said it to the epergne, in his dry Scotch voice, with­out any ex­pres­sion at all. “A peer on a pub­lisher’s stair at nine in the morn­ing, wait­ing for a par­cel, will be all over town by night. I think he would call it Wait­ing on the Mor­timers.”

He did not know whether it was true. It was the first thing he had said at a din­ner-table in his life with­out know­ing whether it was true, and he found that he did not mind at all.

“The puppy!” His lord­ship put down his glass. “He would, too. He would make a para­graph of it, and the town would have it with its break­fast.” He looked down the table with great in­dig­na­tion at the place where Mr. Wray would have been sit­ting if Mr. Wray had ever been asked. “No. No, we shall not give him the sat­is­fac­tion. Hindley, you shall de­liver with­out me, and I shall hear of it af­ter­wards, which is how a gen­tle­man hears of most things. Kinross, I am ob­liged to you. You don’t say much, but when you do, it’s to the pur­pose.”

Mr. Hindley drank off his wine. Then he looked across the table at Mr. Kinross, with his small shrewd eyes, and did not look away.

They had the mut­ton, and Frois­sart with it; and after the cloth was drawn his lord­ship gave them the King, and then, be­cause it was nearly Christ­mas, Mr. Dalgleish.

“I gave you till Christ­mas, Dalgleish,” he said, with great af­fec­tion, “and you have ten days.”

“I am a con­vey­an­cer, my lord.”

“So you are. So you are.” His lord­ship passed the port. “Well, Kinross? You have heard them both. Which of them was lying?”

Mr. Kinross looked at Mr. Dalgleish, who could not be cor­rec­ted with­out being con­fessed, and at Mr. Hindley, who could not be con­fessed with­out being ruined, and at the de­canter, which was be­tween them.

“Neither of them, sir,” he said, “about any­thing he knew.”

His lord­ship was en­chanted. He said that it was dip­lo­matic, and that Kinross should have gone to Vienna, and he said it again to Mr. Tillotson, who had heard it the first time; and the even­ing went on, as Lord Ashcombe’s even­ings did, until el­even, when it stopped.

In the hall, while the foot­men looked for the hats, Mr. Hindley came and stood by him.

“You’ll not give me away, Mr. Kinross.”

It was not a ques­tion, and it was said in his own voice, low, so that it did not reach the foot­men.

“I have noth­ing to give.”

“You’ve some­thing. I’ve watched you since the fish.” Mr. Hindley took his hat from the foot­man and looked into it, as though he ex­pec­ted to find some­thing there. “There’s a house in Mos­ley Street that’s been in my fam­ily sixty year, and it’ll not see Lady Day in it with­out help. A lord’s table at Christ­mas is worth a thou­sand pound of credit to a house like ours; a lord’s table as a lit­er­ary man is worth two. I never said I wrote them. I said to Bal­dock I’d not said I wasn’t, which in Mos­ley Street is a dif­fer­ent thing; and then his lord­ship said it for me, and I let him.” He put the hat on. “I’m a plain man. That’s all it was.”

“Then de­liver noth­ing,” said Mr. Kinross, “and do not go look­ing for who­ever does.”

Mr. Hindley looked at him for a long mo­ment, from under the hat.

“I’ve a no­tion, Mr. Kinross,” he said, “that you’ve a no­tion.”

And he went out into the frost, in his twice-soled boots, and walked away across the Square to­wards Oxford Street, since he had given up hack­ney-coaches for the quarter, and did not look back.

Mr. Kinross, watch­ing him go, understood that he had just shown the one man in Lon­don who must not see it that he cared who was found.

*  *  *  *  *

He did not go up his own steps. He stood on Lord Ashcombe’s pave­ment until Mr. Hindley had gone round the corner, with the frost set­tling on his

hat; and then he turned east, which was the way she had gone, and walked.

He went down Mount Street, past the pub­lic-house and the work­house and the dark areas of a great many houses that were not el­eg­ant, and looked down into every one of them; and through Berke­ley Square, where the frost lay on the grass of the garden like some­thing spilt, and out into Pic­ca­dilly, with the Green Park black on the other side of it. He looked, as he went, at door­steps and area gates, and at the boots of the people he passed, which at that hour were mostly watch­men’s. He was not look­ing for her. She was not in Pic­ca­dilly at mid­night. He was look­ing at what she had looked at, which was the only thing he could do.

He passed the end of Albe­marle Street, and did not turn his head; and he was half-way to the Hay­mar­ket be­fore he no­ticed that he had not, and that for the first time in a twelve­month he had gone by it with­out a thought of the Warden.

At the top of the Hay­mar­ket a line of verse came into his head, which he had not asked for and did not want.

He knew where it came from: from a lord who had since gone to Italy. It had been sung at Mr. Kinross, to Mr. Nathan’s music and by his aunt’s ar­range­ment, at a suc­ces­sion of pi­ano­for­tes, until he could not hear the first line with­out wish­ing to leave the room. He had even been present at its oc­ca­sion, in the sum­mer of the year four­teen: a party at which a Mrs. Wilmot came in late, in black with spangles on it, and the lord went home, the town said, and wrote the lines in the morn­ing. Mr. Kinross had thought the lines very good, and the lady very hand­some, and the con­nex­ion be­tween them a little too good to be true.

He said it aloud at the corner of Cock­spur Street; and a watch­man in a box there, who had not been asleep, put out his lan­tern and his head to­gether and said, “Past twelve o’clock, and a frosty night,” with great sever­ity, to a gen­tle­man who had dined.

Mr. Kinross agreed that it was.

He had not looked at her eyes. He would have said so on his pave­ment; and he went over it under King Charles at Char­ing Cross. He had looked at them a great deal, with­out know­ing it, and could see them now more clearly than the lamps.

They were green. He would have said grey, if he had been asked, and been wrong: a pale, clear green, ringed with dark, like the river at the Temple stairs when the sun is on it. They had been doing a sum the whole time

she talked to him, stead­ily and with­out hurry; they had gone up once, when she spoke of the strip of sky with the rail­ings across it, as though the sky were there above the area and she could see it; and they had come out at the foot of the sum once, when she laughed, all at once, as if it had come out right and she had not ex­pec­ted it to. He had seen Mrs. Wilmot’s eyes in the sum­mer of the year four­teen, and every­body had said that they were fine, and so they were; but they had looked at a room to see who was look­ing at them. They had not been ex­traordin­ary, and these were. These had looked at his pave­ment to see what it cost, and who had paid, and whether the sky came into it; and they had looked at him as at a sum not quite fin­ished, that she might come back to.

He con­sidered, going down the Strand, whether she was beau­ti­ful; and she was; and the poem, he thought, had been reach­ing past the lady in the spangles, as poems will, for some­thing that was not in the room.

It came to him out­side Exeter Change, with the beasts asleep in the me­na­gerie over the shops, that he was in love. He had never been in love, and had a low opin­ion of the con­di­tion as poets de­scribed it; and he ex­amined it all the way to Somer­set House, like a dis­puted read­ing, and could find noth­ing wrong with it ex­cept that he did not know the lady’s name.

Since he was one-and-twenty his aunt had put a great many young women of in­tel­lect in his way, and he had not been able to love one of them, and had con­cluded, with her, that the fault was in him. It was in him; but it was that he could not love a mind put on for com­pany, like a gown, and had been wait­ing all those years, with­out know­ing it, for one that did not care whether any­body saw it. An un­pre­tend­ing in­tel­lect: the rarest thing in Lon­don, and the one he had sup­posed, until that even­ing, that he pos­sessed him­self, alone, in Albe­marle Street, un­signed. It was the first time it had ever oc­curred to him that this was a van­ity.

She had none. She had writ­ten eight num­bers of the best thing in Lon­don and let a cot­ton-man dine on them. She had come down his area steps in her own boots, to know, and gone up them again with­out a word to any­body. He had writ­ten, on a bench in August, that she was com­pet­ent; and he thought of the word, going by St. Mary’s, and was ashamed of it.

The line came back to him there, un­in­vited, like a tune from a bar­rel-organ two streets off; and he had stopped wish­ing to leave the room.

He meant to marry her. That came to him under the tower of St. Clement’s, and it was not a dis­cov­ery

but a fact, like the river be­hind the houses, going down in the dark to the sea whether any­body looked at it or not. He thought it very un­likely that she would have him. It made no dif­fer­ence whatever.

And she must be kept from all of them: from his lord­ship, wait­ing on a stair to see a calf de­livered; from Mr. Wray, who would make a para­graph of her; from Mr. Hindley, who had a no­tion; and from his aunt. She had kept her name from Lon­don for eight months. He would not be the man who gave it away.

He could have asked. Mr. Bal­dock knew; Rad­cliffe, by Feb­ru­ary, would very likely know. He would ask neither of them. To ask was to tell. Bal­dock would re­fuse him, and Rad­cliffe would keep it, as he kept everything; and both would know that some­body wanted to know, and so, within the week, would she. He would do as she had done with his kit­chen. He would go and look.

He came to Temple Bar a few minutes be­fore one, and stood under it, where West­min­ster stops and the City be­gins; and up the street, on St. Dun­stan’s clock, the two gi­ants lif­ted their clubs and struck one.

Fleet Street went away from him east­ward in its double row of lamps, down to the dark at the bot­tom where the Fleet ran under it, and up again to Lud­gate and St. Paul’s: courts and al­leys on either hand, and print­ers and law-sta­tion­ers and cof­fee-houses, and lodgings over shops, and not one win­dow lit that he could see. She was some­where east of where he stood, in a place that was not a quiet one, asleep, or not asleep; and she did not know that any­body in Lon­don was look­ing for her.

He did not know her name. He knew the price of her boots, and the col­our of her eyes, and that she could read a slate up­side down across a kit­chen table. It was not much to go on. It was a good deal more than she had had of him in Oc­to­ber; and she had gone and looked.

(To be con­tin­ued.)