ll and The
Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately
"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it,
filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode,
when he came and found it housing the lovers.

THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE

VIII

IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN

England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and
drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through
which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives
to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite
another.

Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the
time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in
immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself
lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.

He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the
door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find
his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.

She was at home.

An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected
that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten
years, meant to him still.

In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a
pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.

He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the
consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were
not at his tongue's end.

The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and
candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there
could be no doubt.

The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly
comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a
hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had
they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real
and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate,
than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it
and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an
occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some
out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country
station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies
and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer