ound-lease having but a year or two to run, looked on with equanimity
whilst the building decayed. Under any circumstances, the family must
soon have sought a home elsewhere, and Samuel's good fortune enabled
them to take a house in Dagmar Road, not far from Grove Lane; a new
and most respectable house, with bay windows rising from the half-sunk
basement to the second storey. Samuel, notwithstanding his breadth of
mind, privately admitted the charm of such an address as 'Dagmar Road,'
which looks well at the head of note-paper, and falls with sonority from
the lips.

The Barmby sisters, Lucy and Amelia by name, were unpretentious
young women, without personal attractions, and soberly educated. They
professed a form of Dissent; their reading was in certain religious and
semi-religious periodicals, rarely in books; domestic occupations took
up most of their time, and they seldom had any engagements. At appointed
seasons, a festivity in connection with 'the Chapel' called them forth;
it kept them in a flutter for many days, and gave them a headache. In
the strictest sense their life was provincial; nominally denizens of
London, they dwelt as remote from everything metropolitan as though
Camberwell were a village of the Midlands. If they suffered from
discontent, no one heard of it; a confession by one or the other that
she 'felt dull' excited the sister's surprise, and invariably led to the
suggestion of 'a little medicine.'

Their brother they regarded with admiration, tempered by anxiety. 'Great
talents,' they knew by report, were often perilous to the possessor, and
there was reason to fear that Samuel Bennett Barmby had not resisted
all the temptations to which his intellect exposed him. At the age of
one-and-twenty he made a startling announcement; 'the Chapel' no longer
satisfied the needs of his soul, and he found himself summoned to join
the Church of England as by law established. Religious intolerance not
being a family characteristic, Mr. Barmby and his daughters, though they
looked grave over the young man's apostasy, admitted his freedom in this
matter; their respected friend Mr. Lord belonged to the Church, and it
could not be thought that so earnest-minded a man walked in the way to
perdition. At the same time, Samuel began to exhibit a liking for social
pleasures, which were, it might be hoped, innocent, but, as they kept
him from home of evenings, gave some ground for uneasiness. He had
joined a society o