‘Does she never come out?’ he asked himself one fine winter day, when there was sunshine even in the realms of Shadrack. It was a month after his adventure with Homer Sivewright, and he had lingered by the gate a good many times. ‘Does she never breathe the free air of heaven, never see the faces of mankind? Is she a cloistered nun in all but the robe, and without the companionship which may make a convent tolerable?—without even the affection of that grim old grandfather? for how coldly he spoke of her! What a life!’ Lucius was full of pity for this girl, whom he had only known one brief hour. If any one had suggested that he was in love with her, he would have scorned the notion. Yet there are passions which endure for a lifetime; which defy death and blossom above a grave; though their history may be reckoned by rare hours of brightness, too easily reckoned in the dull sum of life. ‘Love at sight is but the fancy of poets and fools,’ thought Lucius; ‘but it would be strange if I were not sorry for a fair young life thus blighted.’ His violin had a new pathos for him now, in those occasional hours of leisure when he laid aside his books and opened the case which held that magician. His favourite sonatas breathed a languid melancholy, which sounded to him like the complaint of an imprisoned soul—that princess of fairy tale—the bric-à-brac dealer’s granddaughter. But to think of her thus, as he played dreamily by his lonely fireside, was only to feel a natural compassion for an oppressed fellow-creature. This tendency to dwell upon one subject, and that a foolish one, since his pity could not be of the smallest service to its object, finally worried him not a little. Thus it was that, finding himself his own master an hour or so earlier than usual one January afternoon, he told himself that the wisest thing he could do would be to get away from the Shadrack-road atmosphere altogether. ‘The life I lead is too narrow, too completely monotonous,’ he thought. ‘No wonder I have taken to exaggerate the importance of trifles. Yes, I will refresh myself by a few hours’ liberty in a brighter world. I will go and hunt up Geoffrey Hossack.’ They were firm friends still, though their lives lay as wide apart as two rivers which have their source from the same watershed, and wander off by opposite ways to the sea, never to touch again. They had lost sight of each other for some time of late. Geoffrey, ever a peripatetic spirit, had been doing Norway, with an excursus into Lapland during the last two years; but a letter received just before Christmas had announced his return, and his sojourn at a manor-house in Yorkshire. ‘I shall begin the new year in the City of cities,’ he wrote; ‘and one of my first occupations will be to beat up your quarters in that queer world of yours beyond the Tower. But if you are kind enough to forestall me, you will find me in my old rooms at Philpott’s.—Yours, as per usual, G. H.’