But if the domain was small, it was, in the eyes of the Crown-and-Anchor world, genteel, if not splendid. There was a looking-glass in a mahogany frame over the mantelpiece, with a pair of black-velvet kittens, and a crockery shepherd and shepherdess in front of it; a pair of fancy bellows hung from a nail on one side of the fireplace, and a fancy hearthbrush adorned the other side. Altogether, Mrs. Wincher felt that in Mrs. Hickett’s ground floor she was sumptuously lodged, and could hold her head high in the Shadrack-road when, in her own phrase, she ‘fetched her errands,’ with no galling sense of having descended the social ladder. She felt the strength of her position with peculiar force this morning when she opened the door to Lucius Davoren. Her first sensation on beholding him was, as she informed Mrs. Hickett in a subsequent conversation, ‘astarickle.’ She fully believed he had come to announce the apprehension of the thief, or the recovery of the stolen property. But in the next moment her native dignity came to her rescue, and she received her guest with a freezing politeness and an assumption of profound indifference. Some memory of the summer evenings when Mrs. Wincher had played the duenna, the happy talk of a bright future to which she had listened approvingly, came back to Lucius at sight of her familiar countenance. He had once thought her the soul of fidelity; even now he preferred to think her innocent of any complicity in her husband’s guilt. Jacob Wincher was sitting by the fireless grate in a somewhat despondent attitude. He had found ‘odd jobs’ harder to get than he had supposed they would be, and enforced idleness was uncongenial. Nor was his slender stock of money calculated to hold out long against the charges of rent and living. ‘Good-morning,’ said Lucius with cold civility. ‘I should be glad to have a few minutes’ talk with you alone, Mr. Wincher, if you’ll allow me.’ ‘I have no secrets from my good lady, sir. You can say what you have to say before her. You haven’t found out who took that silver. I can tell as much as that from your manner,’ said Jacob Wincher quietly. ‘I can’t say that I have actually found the thief,’ answered Lucius; ‘but I have made a discovery which may help me to find him.’ ‘Eh, sir? What discovery?’ ‘Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius, seating himself opposite the old man and leaning across the table to look into his face, ‘who was the man you let into your master’s house, by the brewhouse door, between one and two o’clock on the seventeenth of last month?’ ‘Sir,’ said Jacob Wincher, steadily returning the questioner’s steady gaze, ‘as surely as there is a higher Power above us both, that knows and judges what we do and say, I have told you nothing but the truth. I let no one into my master’s house on that night or any other night.’