She had caught an earlier and faster train from Beckham than the one by which she had intended to travel, so that she arrived in London and drove to the house where Miss Taylor had taken apartments for her, two hours before the time at which the landlady expected her. The consequence was that the dirty servant who opened the door led her up to a dingy and cheerless sitting-room on the second floor, the grate of which was empty; and Annie’s heart sunk with a feeling of unutterable wretchedness and desolation as she sat shivering, with her mantle still round her, on the dusty little sofa, watching the dirty servant as she knelt on the hearth-rug and tried, for a long time in vain, to coax some spluttering, damp little sticks and a handful of slaty coals into a fire. When it was sufficiently ignited to smoke violently, she retired, satisfied, leaving Annie to cough and choke and shiver, and wish herself back again at the Grange. It was all her own fault that she was catching cold in an uncomfortable lodging, instead of being well cared for in the midst of her husband’s family. The gratification of her ambition, which had brought her to this cheerless welcome, seemed an unsatisfactory sort of reward at this moment for the sacrifice she had made alike of comfort and duty--for self-reproach for her own hardness had been busy at Annie’s heart since she received her husband’s farewell kiss that morning. At last, after emitting gusts of black blinding smoke, each one of which grew feebler than the last, the fire went out altogether; and Annie was reduced by this time to too spiritless a state to ring the bell and go through another ordeal of smoke and servant. “I suppose they will come up at tea-time,” she thought, as she went listlessly into the bedroom and began to unpack. Dusk was coming on when she heard a knock at the sitting-room door. “Come in!” she called out from where she knelt by her trunks. Then she heard no more, and began to think she must have been mistaken, when the knock was repeated. “Come in!” she cried a second time; and then she heard the door open, and a man’s tread in the next room. She rose from her knees, went in to the sitting-room, and found herself face to face with Aubrey Cooke, who was standing in his usual stooping attitude, looking paler and plainer than ever, with some parcels in his hands. He was shy, nervous, and stood there without a word to say for himself. But the sight of a familiar face in this desolate, cheerless place had restored Annie in a moment to life and animation. “Mr. Cooke!” she cried, as she went forward and shook hands with him. “How kind of you! How did you know I was coming? I am so very glad to see you!” Her face had recovered its light, her eyes were sparkling with their old brightness. Aubrey got back his self-possession as he looked at her, and began slowly laying down his parcels upon the table and taking more from his pockets.