Eustace Thorburn came to Tilbury Crescent in the blazing July noontide. He had landed at St. Katherine’s Wharf, and had made his way to this northern suburb on foot. He was rich enough to have ridden in an omnibus, or to have enjoyed the luxury of a hansom, had he been so minded; but he was an ambitious young man, and had cultivated the nobler Spartan virtues from his earliest boyhood. The few pounds in his possession would have to serve him until he returned to the Parthenée, or obtained some new employment; so he had much need to be careful of shillings, and chary even of pence. The walk through the dirty bustling London streets seemed long and weary to him; but his thoughts were more weary than that pedestrian journey under the meridian sun, and the sad memories of his youth were a heavier burden than the carpet-bag he carried slung across his shoulder. He knocked at the door of one of the shabbiest houses in the crescent, and was admitted by an elderly woman, who was slipshod and slovenly, but who had a good-natured face, which brightened as she recognized the traveller. In the next moment she remembered the sad occasion of his coming, and put on that conventional expression of profound sorrow which people assume so easily for the affliction of others. “Ah, dear, dear, Mr. Thorburn!” she cried, “I never thought to see you come back like this, and she not here to bid you welcome, poor sweet lamb!” The young man held up his hand to stay the torrent of sympathy. “Please, don’t talk to me about my mother,” he said, quietly; “I can’t bear it--yet.” The honest woman looked at him wonderingly. She had been accustomed to deal with people who liked to talk of their griefs, and she did not understand this quiet way of putting aside a sorrow. The mourners whom she had encountered had worn their sackcloth and covered themselves with ashes in the face of the world, and here was a young man who had not so much as a band upon his hat, and who rejected her friendly sympathy! “I can have my--the old rooms, for a week or so, I suppose, Mrs. Bane?” “Yes, sir. I’ve took the liberty to put a bill up, thinking as perhaps you might not return from abroad; and if it’s for a week only, perhaps you’d allow the bill to remain? There are so many apartments about this neighbourhood, you see, sir, and people are that pushing now-a-days, that a poor widow-woman has scarcely a chance. It’s a hard thing to be left alone in the world, Mr. Thorburn.” There was an open wound in the heart of Eustace Thorburn which ignorant hands were always striking. “It’s a hard thing to be left alone in the world,” he thought, echoing the landlady’s lamentation. “_She_ was left alone in the world before I was born.” The landlady repeated her question. “Oh yes, you can leave the bill; but don’t let any one come to look at the rooms to-day. I am not likely to be here more than a week. Can I go upstairs at once?”