o be seen. It was the timid, pale,
and unwashed face of a girl who was readily supposed to be a servant,
taken from a cottage, and turned into a bringer of wood and water and a
scourer of tubs and trenches. She waited in timorous silence the
delivery of my message. Was Mrs. Villars at home?

"No; she has gone to town."

Were any of her daughters within?

She could not tell; she believed--she thought--which did I want? Miss
Hetty or Miss Sally?

"Let me see Miss Hetty." Saying this, I pushed gently against the door.
The girl, half reluctant, yielded way; I entered the passage, and,
putting my hand on the lock of a door that seemed to lead into a
parlour,--"Is Miss Hetty in this room?"

No; there was nobody there.

"Go call her, then. Tell her there is one who wishes to see her on
important business. I will wait for her coming in this room." So saying,
I opened the door, and entered the apartment, while the girl withdrew to
perform my message.

The parlour was spacious and expensively furnished, but an air of
negligence and disorder was everywhere visible. The carpet was wrinkled
and unswept; a clock on the table, in a glass frame, so streaked and
spotted with dust as scarcely to be transparent, and the index
motionless, and pointing at four instead of nine; embers scattered on
the marble hearth, and tongs lying on the fender with the handle in the
ashes; a harpsichord, uncovered, one end loaded with _scores_, tumbled
together in a heap, and the other with volumes of novels and plays, some
on their edges, some on their backs, gaping open by the scorching of
their covers; rent; blurred; stained; blotted; dog-eared; tables awry;
chairs crowding each other; in short, no object but indicated the
neglect or the ignorance of domestic neatness and economy.

My leisure was employed in surveying these objects, and in listening
for the approach of Miss Hetty. Some minutes elapsed, and no one came. A
reason for delay was easily imagined, and I summoned patience to wait. I
opened a book; touched the instrument; surveyed the vases on the
mantel-tree; the figures on the hangings, and the print of Apollo and
the Sibyl, taken from Salvator, and hung over the chimney. I eyed my own
shape and garb in the mirror, and asked how my rustic appearance would
be regarded by that supercilious and voluptuous being to whom I was
about to present myself.

Presently the latch of the door was softly moved: it opened, and the
simpleton, befo