Mrs. Bane plunged her hand into a capacious pocket, and, after much searching the depths of that receptacle, produced a door-key, which she handed to Eustace. “Mr. Mayfield told me to lock the door, sir, because of papers and such-like. The bedroom door is fastened on the inside.” The young man nodded, and went upstairs with a brisk, rapid footstep, and not with that ponderous, solemn tread which Mrs. Bane would have considered appropriate to his bereaved condition. “And I thought he would have took on dreadful!” she ejaculated, as she went back to her underground kitchen, where there was generally an atmosphere laden with the steam of boiling soap-suds, or an odour of singed ironing-blanket. Eustace Thorburn unlocked the door, and went into the room which had so lately been inhabited by his mother. It was a dingy little sitting-room, opening into a bedroom that was still smaller. It was a lodging of the same pattern as a thousand other lodgings in newly-built suburbs. The personalty of the woman who had left it for a still narrower lodging would scarcely have realized twenty shillings under the auctioneer’s hammer; and yet to Eustace Thorburn the shabby room was eloquent of the dead. That dilapidated rosewood workbox--for which the auctioneer would have been ashamed to propose a starting bid of a shilling--conjured up the vision of a patient creature bending over her work. The little stand of books--cheap editions of the poets, in worn cloth binding--recalled _her_ sweet face, illumined by a transient splendour, as the inspired verses of her favourites lifted her above this earth and all her earthly sorrows. The valueless china inkstand, and worn blotting-book, had been used by her for more than four years. Eustace Thorburn took the things up one by one, and put them to his lips. There was something almost passionate in the kiss which he imprinted upon those lifeless objects--it was the kiss which he would have pressed upon her pale lips, had he been recalled in time to bid her farewell. He kissed the books which she had been wont to read, the pen with which she had written, and then cast himself suddenly into the low chair where he had so often seen her seated, and abandoned himself to his grief. Had Mrs. Bane, the landlady, heard these convulsive sobs, and seen the tears streaming between the fingers which the young man clasped before his eyes, she would have had no need to complain of Mr. Thorburn’s want of emotion. For a long time he sat in the same attitude, still weeping. But the passionate grief wore itself out at last. He dashed the tears from his eyes with an impatient gesture, and rose, pale and calm, to begin the work which he had set himself to do.