In the hall, where a dun was sitting, there was little to remove the prejudice he may have conceived; little, too, in the dingy staircase, cumbered with plates and stale food; or in the first-floor rooms, from which some one peeped and another whispered, and both giggled; or in that second-floor room, at once smart and shabby, and remarkable for many photographs of one young girl, where he was bidden to wait--little or nothing. But when he had pished and pshawed at the tenth photograph, he was called into an inner room, where a strange silence prevailed. Involuntarily he stepped softly. "It was kind of you to come," some one said--some one who was lying in a great chair brought very near to the open window that the speaker might breathe more easily--"very kind. And you have come so quickly." "I have been in London some days," he answered gently, the fastidious expression gone from his face. "Your daughter's letter followed me from the country and reached me an hour ago. It has been no trouble to me to come. I am only pained at finding you so ill." "Ah!" she answered. Doubtless her thoughts were busy; while his flew back nearly thirty years to a summer evening, when he had walked with her under the trees in Chelsea Gardens and heard her pour into his ear--she was a young actress in the first blush of success--her hopes and ambitions. There was nothing in the memory of which he had need to be ashamed. In those days he had been reading for orders, and, having lodgings in a respectable street, had come by chance to know two of his neighbours--her mother and herself. The two were living a quiet domestic life, which surprised and impressed him. The girl's talent and the contrast between her notoriety and her simple ways had had a charm for him. For some months the neophyte and the actress were as brother and sister. But there the feeling had stopped; and when his appointment to a country curacy had closed this pretty episode in his life, the exchange of a few letters had but added grace to its ending. Now old feelings rose to swell his pity as he traced the girl's features in the woman's face. "You have a daughter. You have been married since we parted," he said. "Yes. It is for her sake I have troubled you," was her answer. "She is a good girl--oh, so good! But she has no one in the world except me, and I am leaving her. Poor Grissel!" "She is on the stage?" he inquired gravely. "Yes; and she has succeeded young, as I did. We have not been unhappy together. You remember the life my mother and I had? I think it has been the same over again." She smiled ever so little. He remembered something of the quiet pathos of that life. "Your husband is dead?" he asked. "Dead! I wish he were!" she answered bitterly, the smile passing from her face. "My girl had better be alone than with her father. Ah, you do not know! When he went to America years ago--with another woman--I thanked God for it. Dead? Oh, no! There is no chance that he is dead."