mouth, that if the house had grown ugly and commonplace,
that only made it a better setting for the ugly and commonplace thing
which he was about to do.

* * * * *

About half an hour later a boy, looking like the 'buttons' of a
lodging-house, walked up to the side entrance of Fenwick's ambitious
mansion--which possessed a kind of courtyard, and was built round two
sides of an oblong. The door was open and the charwoman just inside,
so that the boy had no occasion to ring. He carried a parcel carefully
wrapped in an old shawl.

'Is this Mr. Fenwick's?' asked the boy, consulting a dirty scrap of
paper.

'Aye,' said the woman. 'Well, who's it from? isn't there no note with
it?'

The boy replied that there was no note, and his instructions were to
leave it.

'But what name am I to say?' the woman called after him as he went
down the path.

The boy shook his head.

'Don't know--give it up!' he said, impudently, and went off whistling.

'Silly lout,' said the woman, crossly, and, taking up the package,
which was not very large, she went with it to the studio, reflecting
as she went that by the feel of it it was an unframed picture, and
that if some one would only take away some of the beastly, dusty
things that were already in the house--that wouldn't, so the bailiffs
said, fetch a halfpenny--it would be better worth while than bringing
new ones where they weren't wanted.

There was at first no answer to her knock. She tried the door, and
wondered to find it locked. But presently she heard Fenwick moving
about inside.

'Well, what is it?'

His voice was low and impatient.

'A parcel for you, sir.'

'Take it away.'

'Very well, sir.'

She turned obediently and was halfway down the passage which led to
the dining-room, when the studio door opened with a great crash and
Fenwick looked out.

'Bring that here. What is it?'

She retraced her steps.

'Well, it's a picture, I think, sir.'

He held out his hand for it, took it, and instantly withdrew into the
studio and again locked the door. She noticed that he seemed to
have lit one candle in the big studio, and his manner struck her as
strange. But her slow mind followed the matter no further, and she
went back to the cooking of his slender supper.

Fenwick meanwhile was standing with the parcel in his hand. At the
woman's knock he had risen from a table, where he had been writing a
letter. A black object, half-covered