me there to call upon young Miss Buchanan. The memory of
Helen's unobtrusive, wonderfully understanding kindness to him during
his last days at Merriston, remained for him as the only bright spot in
a desolate blankness. He had not seen her again. She had been paying
visits, but she had written in return to a note of inquiry from
Cambridge, to say that she was settled, now, in London for a long time
and that she would be delighted to see him on the day he suggested--that
of his arrival in town.

He was ushered by the most staid, most crisp of parlour-maids, not into
Helen's own little sanctum downstairs, but into the drawing-room. It was
a narrow room, running to the back of the house where a long window
showed a ghostly tree in the fog outside, and it was very much crowded
with over-large furniture gathered together from Miss Buchanan's past.
There were chintz-covered chairs and sofas that one had to make one's
way around, and there were cabinets filled with china, and there were
tables with reviews and book-cutters laid out on them. And it was the
most cheerful of rooms; three canaries sang loudly in a spacious gilt
cage that stood in a window, the tea-table was laid before the fire, and
the leaping firelight played on the massive form of the black cat,
dozing in his basket, on the gilt of the canaries' cage, on the china
in the cabinets, the polished surface of the chintz, and the copper
kettle on the tea-table.

Franklin stood and looked about him, highly interested. He liked to
think that Helen had such a comfortable refuge to fall back upon, though
by the time that old Miss Buchanan appeared he had reflected that so
much comfort might be just the impediment that had prevented her from
taking to her wings as he felt persuaded she could and should do. Old
Miss Buchanan interested him even more than her room. She was a firm,
ample woman of over sixty, with plentiful grey hair brushed back
uncompromisingly from her brow, tight lips, small, attentive eyes with
projecting eyebrows over them, and an expression at once of reticence
and cordiality. She wore a black dress of an old-fashioned cut, and
round her neck was a heavy gold chain and a large gold locket.

Helen would be in directly, she said, and expected him.

Franklin saw at once that she took him for granted, and that she was
probably in the habit of taking all Helen's acquaintances for granted,
and of making them comfortable until Helen came and took them off