It was the evening of the day after Yorke had listened to his own biography, and night had long fallen upon the shivering woods of Crompton; the rain fell heavily also upon roof and sky-light with thud and splash. It was a wretched night, even in town, where man has sought out so many inventions to defy foul weather and the powers of darkness. The waste-pipes could not carry off the water from the houses fast enough, choke and gurgle as they would; the contents of the gutters overflowed the streets; and wherever the gas-lights shone was reflected a damp glimmer. In a large room on the ground-floor of Rupert Street, Bloomsbury, sat a woman writing, and undisturbed by the dull beating of the rain without. She often raised her head, intermitted her occupation, and appeared to listen; but it was to the voices of her Past that she was giving heed, and not to the ceaseless patter of the rain. What power they have with us, those voices! While they speak to us we hear nothing else; we know of nothing that is taking place; there is no Present at all; we are living our lives again. If purely, so much the better for us; if vilely, viciously, there is no end to the contaminating association. It is to escape this that some men work, and others pray. The furniture of the room was peculiar to the neighborhood; massive, yet cheap. It had been good once; but long before it came into the hands of her who now owned it. There was the round bulging looking-glass; the side-board was adapted for quite a magnificent show of plate and tankards--only there were none; a horse-hair sofa, from which you would have seen the intestines protruding had it not been for the continuous gloom. If the sun ever visited Rupert Street, it shone on the other side of the way. On the mantel-piece were two of those huge shells in which the tropic deep is ever murmuring. Who that has taken lodgings in London does not know them? Who has not sometimes forgotten the commonplaces of his life in listening to those cold lifeless lips? If you take them up on their own tropic shore, they will tell you of the roar of London streets.