‘No; she was born within the sound of Bow bells, poor soul. Her father was a bookbinder in Clerkenwell. She had a pretty voice, and a wonderful ear for music; and some one told her she would do very well on the stage. Her home was dull and poor, and she felt she ought to earn her living somehow. So she began to act at a little amateur theatre near Coldbath Fields, and having a bright pretty way with her, she got a good deal of notice, and was offered an engagement to play small singing parts at Sadler’s Wells. I was a member of the stock company there at the time, and her pretty little face and her pretty little ways turned my stupid head somehow, and I told myself that two salaries thrown into one would go further than they would divided; never considering that managers would want to strike a bargain with us—lump us together on the cheap—when we were married; or that when two people are earning no salary it’s harder for two to live than one. Well, we married, and lived a hard life afterwards; but I was true to my poor girl, and fond of her to the last; and when hunger was staring us in the face we were not all unhappy.’ ‘Justina is like her mother, I suppose,’ said Maurice, ‘as she doesn’t at all resemble you?’ ‘No,’ replied Matthew, ‘my wife was a pretty woman, but not in Justina’s style.’ ‘What made you hit upon such an out-of-the-way name as Justina? Mind, I like the name very much, but it is a very uncommon one.’ Mr. Elgood looked puzzled. ‘I dare say it was a fancy of my wife’s,’ he said. ‘But I really don’t recollect anything about it.’ ‘I’ll tell you why I ask the question,’ pursued Maurice. ‘While I was in Cornwall, staying at a farm called Borcel End, I came across the name.’ The comedian almost dropped his teacup. ‘Borcel End!’ he exclaimed, ‘you were at Borcel End?’ ‘Yes. You know the place, it seems. But that’s hardly strange, since you lived so long at Seacomb. Did you know the Trevanards?’ ‘No, I only knew the farm from having it pointed out to me once when a friend gave me a drive across the moor in his dog-cart. A queer, out-of-the-way place. What could have taken you there?’ ‘It was something in the way of an adventure,’ replied Maurice, and then proceeded to relate his experience on that midsummer afternoon among the Cornish hills. He touched lightly upon his visit to Penwyn Manor House, knowing that this might be a painful subject for Justina. But she showed a warm interest in his story. ‘You saw _his_ house,’ she said, ‘the old Manor House he told me about that night at Eborsham. Oh, how like the memory of a dream it seems when I think of it! I should like so much to see that place.’ ‘You shall see it some day, Justina, if—if you will let me show it you,’ said Maurice, stumbling a little over the last part of the sentence. ‘It is strange that you should be twice associated with that remote corner of the land, once in your birth, a second time in poor James Penwyn’s devotion to you.’