A fine, drizzling rain was falling; in the early morning the shabby, dirty houses looked their very worst. Swarms of grimy little children had been turned out of their homes, and were making their way to morning school, and hundreds of busy men and women were hurrying through the streets, all with worn, anxious-looking faces. As he walked to the railway station Frithiof felt almost overpowered by the desolateness of the place. To be a mere unit in this unthinking, unheeding crowd, to be pushed and jostled by the hurrying passengers, who all walked as if their very lives depended on their speed, to hear around him the rapidly spoken foreign language, with its strange north-country accent, all made him feel very keenly that he was indeed a foreigner in a strange land. He was glad to be once more in a familiar-looking train, and actually on his way to London; and soon all these outer impressions faded away in the absorbing consciousness that he was actually on his way to Blanche—that on the very next day he might hope to see her again. Fortunately the Tuesday proved to be a lovely, still, autumn day. He did not like to call upon Mr. Morgan till the afternoon, and, indeed, thought that he should scarcely find him at home earlier, so he roamed about London, and looked at his watch about four times an hour, till at length the time came when he could call a hansom and drive to Lancaster Gate. There are some houses which the moment you enter them suggest to you the idea of money. The Morgans’ house was one of these; everything was faultlessly arranged; your feet sank into the softest of carpets, you were served by the most obsequious of servants, all that was cheap or common or ordinary was banished from view, and you felt that the chair you sat on was a very superior chair, that all the pictures and ornaments were the very best that could be bought, and that ordinary people who could not boast of a very large income were only admitted into this aggressively superior dwelling on sufferance. With all its grandeur, it was not a house which tempted you to break the tenth commandment; it inspired you with a kind of wonder, and if the guests had truly spoken the thought which most frequently occurred to them, it would have been: “I wonder now what he gave for this? It must have cost a perfect fortune!”