"Very well," said Miss Lexden, drawing a long breath; "I only wished to know. You are your own mistress, and control your own actions, of course. You have made your choice, and will abide by it. I don't seek to influence you one jot. But, recollect one thing: if I were to see you with broken health, with broken spirits, ill-used, deserted, starving--as is likely enough, for I know these people--I would not lift one finger to help you, after your degradation of me. I have said it, and you know I keep my word. That is all; we will have no quarrel, and give no occasion for shoulder-shrugs and scandal. The sooner your arrangements permit of your quitting my house, the better pleased I shall be. Now, good night. Withers, I am ready now. See Miss Lexden to her room. Good night, dear." The old lady proffered her enamelled cheek, against which Barbara laid the tip of her nose. And so the aunt and niece separated for the night. CHAPTER XV. MOTHER AND SON. At the drawing-room window of a house in Great Adullam Street, Macpelah Square, in that district of London whilom known as "Mesopotamia," a lady had been sitting from an early hour in the afternoon until now, when twilight falls upon the neighbourhood. This, I am aware, does not particularly fix the hour, because twilight falls upon the Mesopotamian neighbourhood earlier than on any other with which I am acquainted. You leave Oxford Street in a blaze of sunlight, which bit by bit decreases as you progress through the dingy streets and the dull, vast, second-rate squares, until when you enter upon the confines of Great Adullam Street you find the glory of the day departed, a yellow fog settling gloomily down, and the general aspect suicidal. At the time of which I am speaking, the twilight had been a settled thing for at least an hour,--it was approaching six o'clock. The lamps were lighted, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses had pulled their blinds down and settled in for the night; but still at No. 57 the lady sat in the drawing-room window, staring out into the yellow fog. The street lamp flickering on her showed her to be a woman of about sixty years old, with clean-cut regular features, intelligent but sweet expression, and with gray hair--almost white--arranged in broad bands on either side her face. Her dress was black silk, with a soft white-muslin cape pinned across her breast, and on her head she wore a plain white-muslin cap with a little crimped border. On her hands she had black-lace mittens, and she wore a few old-fashioned but valuable rings. A glance at her would have proclaimed her a lady to the most casual observer, a woman of taste and refinement and sensibility to the physiognomist; and a further study would have shown the latter deeply-indented traces of mental anxiety and suffering.