faded carpeting on the stairs and faded oil-cloth in the
passage; in addition to which discomforts a gentleman Ruler was smoking
hard in the front parlour (though it was not yet noon), while the lady
of the house was busily engaged in turpentining the disjointed fragments
of a tent-bedstead at the door of the back parlour, as if in preparation
for the reception of some new lodger who had been fortunate enough to
engage it.

Nicholas had ample time to make these observations while the little boy,
who went on errands for the lodgers, clattered down the kitchen stairs
and was heard to scream, as in some remote cellar, for Miss Bray's
servant, who, presently appearing and requesting him to follow her,
caused him to evince greater symptoms of nervousness and disorder than
so natural a consequence of his having inquired for that young lady
would seem calculated to occasion.

Upstairs he went, however, and into a front room he was shown, and
there, seated at a little table by the window, on which were drawing
materials with which she was occupied, sat the beautiful girl who had
so engrossed his thoughts, and who, surrounded by all the new and strong
interest which Nicholas attached to her story, seemed now, in his eyes,
a thousand times more beautiful than he had ever yet supposed her.

But how the graces and elegancies which she had dispersed about the
poorly-furnished room went to the heart of Nicholas! Flowers, plants,
birds, the harp, the old piano whose notes had sounded so much sweeter
in bygone times; how many struggles had it cost her to keep these two
last links of that broken chain which bound her yet to home! With every
slender ornament, the occupation of her leisure hours, replete with that
graceful charm which lingers in every little tasteful work of woman's
hands, how much patient endurance and how many gentle affections were
entwined! He felt as though the smile of Heaven were on the little
chamber; as though the beautiful devotion of so young and weak a
creature had shed a ray of its own on the inanimate things around,
and made them beautiful as itself; as though the halo with which old
painters surround the bright angels of a sinless world played about a
being akin in spirit to them, and its light were visibly before him.

And yet Nicholas was in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison! If he
had been in Italy indeed, and the time had been sunset, and the scene
a stately terrace! But, there is one broad sky o