A short broad road, with the sun-lighted country beyond; on either side, small newly-built villas, with now and again a house presenting a more venerable aspect. There was grass in the roadway, and one or two of the villas had placards in their windows. In the front garden of one of the nearer houses an old gentleman, with an inflamed face, and a white hankerchief over his head, was plying a rake. No other person was visible; but, when Holdsworth had advanced a few steps, a woman came out of a gate and approached him. His heart came into his throat, and he stood stock still. She drew near, but she was not Dolly. She glanced at him as she passed, struck, maybe, by his pale face, and the singular mixture of old age and youth which his appearance and figure suggested. He breathed deeply and walked forward, glancing to right and left of him. The last house but one on the left was the house he wanted. A brass plate inscribed with Conway’s name and calling was fixed to the iron railings, and over the door was a lamp furnished with blue and red glass. Holdsworth dared scarcely glance at it. When his eye encountered the name he turned cold, and felt the damp perspiration suffusing his forehead. He came back hurriedly, with the bare impression on his mind of a small house with the upper blinds drawn, and with an untended garden in the front. He returned to the main entrance of the road, stopped, looked back, and then slowly retraced his steps. There was a house of an older fashion than any of the others on the right-hand side, about midway; one that had evidently taken root there many years before the little villas had gathered themselves together to intercept its view and violate its pastoral solitude. Its doorway was sheltered by a roomy porch, with creepers clambering up its trellised supporters; its darkling windows had the burnished glitter upon them that is peculiar to old glass; its eaves were capacious enough to accommodate a whole colony of swallows, and it had a fair piece of ground stretching away at its back. The bright brass knocker on the green door, the white doorsteps, the purity of the window glass, and the spotlessness of the window drapery, afforded an excellent guarantee of the housewifely qualities of the inmates. In one of the windows hung a card. Holdsworth opened the gate and knocked. “I should like to see your apartments,” he said to the cheerful-faced, middle-aged woman who had promptly replied to his summons. “Certainly, sir; please to walk in.”