In old Bridgewater's brain there lived, keeping company with other futilities of youth, a girl. The winters and the springs of forty-five years had left her just the same, red-cheeked and buxom, commonplace, pretty, with an undecided mouth, and a crinoline. As he sat cogitating, this old mental daguerreotype took on fresh colours. He saw the sunlight on a certain street in Hoxton, and heard the tinkle of a piano, long gone to limbo, playing a tune that memory had in some mysterious way bound up with the perfume of wall-flowers. He remembered a Christmas card that pulled out like a concertina: a shocking production of art which gave a vista of a garden in filigree paper leading to a house. A feeling of tenderness possessed him. Why should he move in a matter that did not concern him? He determined to remain neutral, and, with the object of dismissing the matter from his mind, turned to his letters. But this kindly, though inferior being was dominated by a strong and active intelligence, and that intelligence existed in the brain of a woman. Whilst he made notes and dictated to a clerk, this alien intelligence was voicing its commands in the sub-conscious portions of his brain. He began to hesitate in his dictation and to shuffle his feet, to pause and to dictate nonsense. Then rising and taking his hat, he asked Mr Wolf, his second in command, to take charge, as he had business which would keep him away for half an hour--and made for the door. In Southampton Row he walked twenty yards, retraced his steps, paused, blew his nose in a huge bandana handkerchief, and then, travelling as if driven by clockwork well wound up, he made for Gordon Square. The servant said that Miss Hancock was dressing to go out, and invited him into the cave-like dining-room. She then closed the door and left him to the tender mercies of the place. Decision was not the most noteworthy characteristic of Mr Bridgewater, nor tact. He stood, consulting the clock on the mantelpiece, yet, had you asked him, he could not have told you the time. Having come into the place of his own volition he was now endeavouring to get up volition enough to enable him to leave. "Well, Bridgewater?" said a voice. The old man turned. Miss Hancock, dressed for going out, stood before him. "Why, I declare, Miss Patience!" said Bridgewater, as if the woman before him was the very last person on earth he expected to see. "You have found me just in time, for I was going out. I am in a hurry, so I won't ask you to sit down. Can I do anything for you?" Bridgewater rubbed his nose. "It's about a little matter, Miss Patience." "Yes?" "A little matter concerning Mr James." "Yes?" "I am afraid--I am afraid, Miss Patience, there is--well--not to put too fine a point upon it--a lady." "What is this you say, Bridgewater? But sit down." "A lady, Miss Patience." "You've said that before--_what_ lady, and what about her?" The recollection of Leavesley's words shot up in her brain.