liminary experience did not influence the judgment of the women in
the slightest degree. For them it was a house that rightly apologized
for itself, and whose apologetic air deserved only a condescending
tolerance.

The front door stood open for the convenience of the artisan who was
screwing at the brass-plate. He moved aside, with the servility that
always characterizes the worker in a city of idlers, and the party
passed into a long narrow hall, whose walls were papered to imitate
impossible blocks of mustard-coloured marble. The party was now at home.

"Here we are!" said Hilda, with a gaiety that absolutely desolated
herself, and in the same instant she remembered that George Cannon had
preceded her in saying 'Here we are!' She looked from the awful glumness
of Sarah Gailey to the equally awful alacrity of George Cannon, and felt
as though she had committed some crime whose nature she could not guess.

A middle-aged maid appeared, like a suspicious scout, at the far end of
the hall, beyond the stairs, having opened a door which showed a glimpse
of a kitchen.

"That tea ready?" asked George Cannon.

"No, sir," said the maid plumply.

"Well, let it be got ready."

"Yes, sir." The maid vanished, flouncing.

Sarah Gailey, with a heavy sigh, dropped her small belongings on to a
narrow bare table that stood against the wall near the foot of the
stairs. Daylight was fading.

"Well," said George Cannon, balancing his hat on his cane, "your luggage
will be here directly. This is the dining-room." He pushed at a
yellow-grained door.

The women followed him into the dining-room, and stared at the dining-
room in silence.

"There's a bedroom behind," he said, as they came out, and he displayed
the bedroom behind. "That's the kitchen." He pointed to the adjoining
door.

"The drawing-room's larger," he said. "It includes the width of the
hall."

They climbed the narrow stairs after him wearily. The door of the
drawing-room was ajar, and the chatter of thin feminine voices could be
heard within. George Cannon gave a soundless warning whisper: "The
Watchetts." And Sarah Gailey frowned back the information that she did
not wish to meet the Watchetts just then. With every precaution against
noise, George Cannon opened two other doors, showing bedrooms. And then,
as it were, hypnotized by him, the women climbed another flight of
narrow stairs, darkening, and saw more rooms, and then still another
flight, and still m