w a little open. I climbed the thick
ivy that runs up the wall--I had often done it when a child--slipped my
hand between the bars of the window, and put the book upon the table."

"But you forgot to raise your hand in warning; and ghosts are not
generally in such a hurry, I think, to say nothing of the size of the
hand."

"It was a scramble; did you hear me fall?"

"I heard a little 'Oh!'"

"Then you _did_ know?"

"I knew Verschoyle had a very good sister."

"Allan, I do not think he suspects. Ought I not to tell him the truth?"

"Not yet. Since the impression has worked such good effects, as well let
him remain under it for a while. Time enough to knock down the
scaffolding when the building is completed--eh, darling?"

_Illustrated Interviews._

XXII.--SIR ROBERT RAWLINSON, K.C.B.

The Boltons, South Kensington, does not cover a very wide area--it is a
circle of houses with a church in the centre, surrounded by trees,
amongst the boughs of which the birds seem to sing and make merry from
New Year's Day to the ringing out of the old year. This is the third
time our note-book and pencil have been busily employed in this very
pleasant corner of Kensington. At No. 16, Madame Albani has chatted over
five o'clock tea and deliciously thin bread and butter; at No. 27, Mr.
F. C. Burnand once frankly declared that to become a successful humorist
one must needs possess a serious turn of mind, and refuse to yield to
it!

I remember this as I cross to the opposite side of The Boltons to No.
11, where the great civil engineer and eminent sanitarian lives--the man
who saved many a life in the Crimea, and has numerous works due to his
engineering skill, not only in this country, but in distant lands. There
is little about his house suggestive of the craft of which he is a past
master. He pleads a most artistic hobby: that of pictures; and after
spending a day with him and Lady Rawlinson--they have been happily
married for sixty-three years--I made a hurried survey of the artistic
treasures on the walls once more, and tried to single out a picture
which had not some history attached to it. It was impossible. And the
day's pleasure ended in not only listening to the story of a not
uneventful life, but the bringing away of a collection of pictorial
anecdotes of remarkable and often historical interest.

[Illustration: THE STUDY.

_From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry._]

In appearance, Sir Robert, though on the very