nd promised more. Her gown, trimmed with a collar
of lace, left the neck free; the maiden cincture at her waist did no
violence to natural proportion.

This afternoon--it was Monday--she could not occupy or amuse herself in
any of the familiar ways. Perhaps the atmosphere of national Jubilee had
a disturbing effect upon her,--in spite of her professed disregard
for the gathering tumult of popular enthusiasm. She had not left home
to-day, and the brilliant weather did not tempt her forth. On the
table lay a new volume from the circulating library,--something about
Evolution--but she had no mind to read it; it would have made her too
conscious of the insincerity with which she approached such profound
subjects. For a quarter of an hour and more she had stood at the window,
regarding a prospect, now as always, utterly wearisome and depressing to
her.

Grove Lane is a long acclivity, which starts from Camberwell suburban
dwellings. The houses vary considerably in size and Green, and, after
passing a few mean shops, becomes a road of aspect, also in date,--with
the result of a certain picturesqueness, enhanced by the growth of fine
trees on either side. Architectural grace can nowhere be discovered,
but the contract-builder of today has not yet been permitted to work
his will; age and irregularity, even though the edifices be but so many
illustrations of the ungainly, the insipid, and the frankly hideous,
have a pleasanter effect than that of new streets built to one pattern
by the mile. There are small cottages overgrown with creepers, relics
of Camberwell's rusticity; rows of tall and of squat dwellings that lie
behind grassy plots, railed from the road; larger houses that stand in
their own gardens, hidden by walls. Narrow passages connect the Lane
with its more formal neighbour Camberwell Grove; on the other side are
ways leading towards Denmark Hill, quiet, leafy. From the top of
the Lane, where Champion Hill enjoys an aristocratic seclusion, is
obtainable a glimpse of open fields and of a wooded horizon southward.

It is a neighbourhood in decay, a bit of London which does not keep pace
with the times. And Nancy hated it. She would have preferred to live
even in a poor and grimy street which neighboured the main track of
business and pleasure.

Here she had spent as much of her life as she remembered, from the end
of her third year. Mr. Lord never willingly talked of days gone by,
but by questioning him she had lea