Into this back-room first went Bessy, passed by her boxes, closed the window, and drew the white blind down. From thence into the next chamber--a pretty room with chintz curtains to the window and the Arabian bed. Dr. Rane was very particular about having plenty of air in his house, and would have every window open all day long. Next, Bessy crossed the landing again to her own chamber. She had to pass through the drab room (as may be remembered) to get to it. The drab room was in just the same state that it used to be; Dr. Rane's glass jars and other articles used in chemistry lying on one side its bare floor. Formerly they were strewed about anywhere: under Bessy's neat rule they were gathered into a small space. Sometimes Bessy thought she should like to make this her own sitting and work-room: its window looked towards the fields beyond Dallory Ham. Often, when she first came to the house, she would softly say to her heart, "What a nice day-nursery it would make!" She had left off saying it now. Taking some work from a drawer in her own room, which was what she went up for--for she knew that Oliver would tell her to leave off if she attempted to stitch the wristbands by candle-light--she stood for a minute at the window and saw some gentleman, whom she did not recognize, turn out of Mr. Seeley's, and go towards Dallory. "A fresh patient," she thought to herself, with a sigh very like envy. "He gets them all. I wish a few would come to Oliver." As she watched the stranger up the road, something in his height and make put her in mind of her dead brother, Edmund. All her thoughts went back to the unhappy time of his death, and to the letter that had led to it. "It's very good of Oliver to comfort me, saying he could not in any case have lived long--and I suppose it was so," murmured Bessy; "but that does not make it any the less shocking. He was killed. Cut off without warning by that wicked, anonymous letter. And I don't believe the writer will be ever traced now: even Richard seems to have cooled in the pursuit, since he discovered it was not the man he had suspected."