r, left her to
perish alone in her squalor and misery.'

Cyril and Wilderspin had returned to the Continent. D'Arcy was still
away.

I made application to the Home Secretary to have the pauper grave
opened. On the ground that I was 'not a relative of the deceased,'
the officials refused to institute even preliminary inquiries.

During this time no news of Mrs. Gudgeon had come to me through Polly
Onion, and I determined to go to Primrose Court and see what had
become of her.

When I reached Primrose Court I found that the shutters of the house
were up. Knocking and getting no response, I ascertained from a
pot-boy who was passing the corner of the court that Mrs. Gudgeon had
decamped. Neither the pot-boy nor any one in the court could tell me
whither she was gone.

'But where is Polly Onion?' I asked anxiously; for I was beginning to
blame myself bitterly for having neglected them.

'I can tell you where poor Polly is,' said the pot-boy. 'She's in the
New North Cemetery. She fell downstairs and broke her neck.'

'Why, she lived downstairs,' I said.

'That's true; you seem to be well up in the family, sir. But Poll
couldn't pay her rent, so old Meg took her in. And on the very
morning when Meg and Poll were a-startin' off together into the
country--it was quite early and dark--Poll stumbles over three young
flower-gals as 'ad crep' in the front door in the night time and was
makin' the stairs their bed. Gals as hadn't made enough to pay for
their night's lodgin' often used to sleep on Meg's stairs. Poll was
picked up as nigh dead as a toucher, and she died at the 'ospital.'

Toiling in the revolving cage of Circumstance, I strove in vain
against that most appalling form of envy--the envy of one's fellow
creatures that they should live and breathe while there is no breath
of life for the _one_.

My uncle Cecil's death had made me a rich man; but what was wealth to
me if it could not buy me respite from the vision haunting me day and
night--the vision of the attic, the mattress, and the woman?

And as I thought of the powerlessness of wealth to give me one crumb
of comfort, and remembered Winnie's sermon about wealth, I would look
at myself in the mirror above my mantelpiece and smile bitterly at
the sight of the hollow cheeks, furrowed brow, and melancholy eyes,
and recall her words about her hovering near me after she was dead.

The thought of my wealth and the squalor in which she had died was, I