Plenty of pictures, and looking-glasses, and things?"

"It was very richly furnished."

It was curious to mark the difference of manner between questioner and
respondent. Solomon, usually so reticent and reserved, was grown quite
voluble. Mrs. Basil, on the other hand, naturally so apt in speech,
seemed to reply with difficulty. She was weighing every word.

"The estate, I suppose, was out of your beat; you did not have much to
do with that?"

"I used to walk in the park, Sir, most days."

"Ay; but the property generally? The friend who writes you to-day don't
say any thing about _that_, I suppose--whether any of it is to be sold
or not, for instance?"

"The report--of course, being a servant, she can only speak from
report--is that Mr. Carew's affairs are in a sad state. Every thing, I
believe, is to be sold at once. The whole estate is said to be--I don't
know if I use the right term--mortgaged."

"Just so," replied Solomon; "yes, yes. That is so, no doubt." There was
a slight pause; Mrs. Basil courtesied, and was about to leave the room.
"Stop a bit, ma'am," said Solomon. "My wife tells me that you are a lone
woman--a widow. Perhaps you'd like to take a bit of dinner with us
to-day?"

Harry began to think her husband was intoxicated. He did get
occasionally so when any particularly good stroke of business was in
course of progress, and on such occasions his manner was unusually
affable; but she had never seen him half so gracious as at present.
Hospitality, though he did sometimes bring a mining agent or a broker
home to dinner, was by no means his strong point. Mrs. Basil looked
doubtfully at her dress, which, though homely, was perfectly well-made
and lady-like, and murmured something about its being almost the
dinner-hour, and there being "no time."

"Oh, never mind your gown" (which, by-the-by, Solomon pronounced
"gownd"); "we're quite plain people ourselves, as my wife will tell you.
You shall take pot-luck with us. Where's Charley? That boy's always
late."

But at that very moment the young gentleman in question entered the
room, at the same time as did the servant with the announcement that
dinner was on the table.

The astonishment of the domestic at seeing her mistress taken down to
the dining-room by the new lodger was only exceeded by that of Charley,
as, with his mother on his arm, he followed the strangely assorted pair.
"I knew she was a witch," he murmured, "with her human skull and her