, and that
yet failed to save her from the landlady's customary failing of loquacity
concerning "better days," together with an irritating, if harmless,
affectation of youthfulness.

All other details were, however, most satisfactory; and at the window
commanding the road that leads through the valley towards the distant
world I settled down to face my work.

But the spirit of industry, once driven forth, returns with coy steps. I
wrote for perhaps an hour, and then throwing down my halting pen I looked
about the room, seeking distraction. A Chippendale book-case stood
against the wall and I strolled over to it. The key was in the lock, and
opening its glass doors, I examined the well-filled shelves. They held a
curious collection: miscellanies with quaint, glazed bindings; novels and
poems; whose authors I had never heard of; old magazines long dead, their
very names forgotten; "keepsakes" and annuals, redolent of an age of
vastly pretty sentiments and lavender-coloured silks. On the top shelf,
however, was a volume of Keats wedged between a number of the
_Evangelical Rambler_ and Young's _Night Thoughts_, and standing on tip-
toe, I sought to draw it from its place.

The book was jambed so tightly that my efforts brought two or three
others tumbling about me, covering me with a cloud of fine dust, and to
my feet there fell, with a rattle of glass and metal, a small miniature
painting, framed in black wood.

I picked it up, and, taking it to the window, examined it. It was the
picture of a young girl, dressed in the fashion of thirty years ago--I
mean thirty years ago then. I fear it must be nearer fifty, speaking as
from now--when our grandmothers wore corkscrew curls, and low-cut bodices
that one wonders how they kept from slipping down. The face was
beautiful, not merely with the conventional beauty of tiresome regularity
and impossible colouring such as one finds in all miniatures, but with
soul behind the soft deep eyes. As I gazed, the sweet lips seemed to
laugh at me, and yet there lurked a sadness in the smile, as though the
artist, in some rare moment, had seen the coming shadow of life across
the sunshine of the face. Even my small knowledge of Art told me that
the work was clever, and I wondered why it should have lain so long
neglected, when as a mere ornament it was valuable. It must have been
placed in the book-case years ago by someone, and forgotten.

I replaced it among its dusty compan