them there.' She pointed at the
bells. 'Nobody but them and mother. She's the 'ousekeeper. If yer mean
the old woman as was 'ere when they turned the 'ouse into flats, she's
dead.'

Edward stepped back. The girl shut the door with a slam. He stood as if
petrified. Victoria looked at him with amusement in her eyes, listening
to the echoes of the girl's voice singing more and more faintly some
catchy tune as she descended into the basement.

'Dead,' said Edward, 'can it be possible--?' He looked like a plant torn
up by the roots. He had jumped on the old ground and it had given way.

'My dear Ted,' said Victoria gently, 'things change, you see.' Slowly
they went down the steps of the house. Victoria did not speak, for a
strange mixture of pity and disdain was in her. She quite understood
that a tie had been severed and that the death of his old landlady meant
for Edward that the past which he had vaguely loved had died with her.
He was one of those amorphous creatures whose life is so interwoven with
that of their fellows that any death throws it into disarray. She let
him brood over his lost memories until they reached Bedford Square.

'But Ted,' she broke in, 'where am I to go?'

Edward looked at her as if dazed. Clearly he had not foreseen that Mrs
Brumfit was not an institution.

'Go?' he said, 'I don't know.'

'Don't you know any other lodgings?' asked Victoria. 'Gower Street seems
full of them.'

'Oh! no,' said Edward quickly, 'we don't know what sort of places they
are. You couldn't go there.'

'But where am I to go then?' Victoria persisted. Edward was silent. 'It
seems to me,' his sister went on, 'that I shall have to risk it. After
all, they won't murder me and they can't rob me of much.'

'Please don't talk like that,' said Edward stiffly. He did not like this
association of ideas.

'Well I must find some lodgings,' said Victoria, a little irritably. 'In
that case I may as well look round near Curran's. I don't like this
street much.'

In default of an alternative, Edward looked sulky. Victoria felt
remorseful; she knew that Gower Street must have become for her brother
the traveller's Mecca and that he was vaguely afraid of the West End.

'Never mind, dear,' she went on more gently, 'don't worry about lodgings
any more. Do you know what you're going to do? you're going to take me
to tea in some nice place and then I'll go with you to St Pancras;
that's the station you said you were going back