"Sir, I am so thankful to you that I cannot do enough to make you believe it. I am Charles Auchester, and we live at No. 14 Herne Street, at a red house with little windows and a great many steps up to the door." "I know the house, and have seen a beautiful Jewess at the window." "Everybody says Millicent is like a Jewess. Sir, do you mind telling me your name? I don't want to know it unless you like to tell it me." "My name is not a very pretty one,--Lenhart Davy."[4] "From David, I suppose?" I said, quickly. My friend looked at me very keenly. "You seem to think so at least." "Yes, I thought you came from a Jew, like us,--partly, I mean. Millicent says we ought to be very proud of it; and I think so too, because it is so very ancient, and does not alter." I perfectly well remember making this speech. Lenhart Davy laughed quietly, but so heartily it was delightful to hear him. "You are quite right about that. Come! will you trust me?" "Oh! sir, I should like to go above all things, if it is not very far,--I mean I must get back soon, or they will be frightened about me." "You _shall_ get back soon. I am afraid they are frightened now,--do you think so? But my little house is on the way to yours, though you would never find it out." He paused, and we walked briskly forwards. FOOTNOTE: [4] Lenhart Davy is supposed by some to have been intended for Ferdinand David, who was Mendelssohn's concert-meister at the Gewandhaus in Leipsic and the teacher of Joachim and Wilhelmj. David never was in England, however, and the resemblance is too remote to be entertained. CHAPTER IV. Turning out of the market-place, a narrow street presented itself: here were factories and the backs of houses. Again we threaded a narrow turning: here was an outskirt of the town. It fronted a vast green space; all building-ground enclosed this quiet corner, for only a few small houses stood about. Here were no shops and no traffic. We went on in all haste, and soon my guide arrested himself at a little green gate. He unlatched it; we passed through into a tiny garden, trim as tiny, pretty as trim, and enchantingly after my own way of thinking. Never shall I forget its aspect,--the round bed in the centre, edged with box as green as moss; the big rose-tree in the middle of the bed, and lesser rose-trees round; the narrow gravel walk, quite golden in the sun; the outer edge of box, and outer bed of heaths and carnations and glowing purple stocks. But above all, the giant hollyhocks, one on each side of a little brown door, whose little latticed porch was arched with clematis, silvery as if moonlight "Minatrost" were ever brooding upon that threshold.