In the room behind, chemical apparatus of strange construction was on one table; packets of herbs were on another; a huge tome lay opened on the floor, and books were piled on the chairs. The apartment was a mixture of a laboratory and lumber room. A furnace was in one corner, retorts, test tubes, crucibles, a huge pestle and mortar, jars, bottles were on a bench close handy. The room was lighted by a window projecting over the Thames, and the roar of the river rushing through the narrow arches and swirling and dashing against the stone work never ceased, though it varied in violence according to wind and tide. The house was a portion of the old chapel of St. Thomas, long since converted from ecclesiastical observances to commercial uses. Dr. Mountchance, who at this moment was at a table in the centre examining a silver flagon and muttering comments upon it, was a little man about seventy, with an enormous head and a spare body and short legs. His face was wrinkled like a piece of wet shrivelled silk and his skin was the colour of parchment. His eyes, very small and deep-set, were surmounted by heavy brows once black, now of an iron grey. His mouth was of prodigious width, the lips thin and straight and his nose long, narrow and pointed. He wore a dirty wig which was always awry, a faded mulberry coloured coat, and a frayed velvet waistcoat reaching halfway down his thighs. His stockings were dirty and hung in bags about his ankles, his feet were cased in yellow slippers more than half worn out. Dr. Mountchance's hearing was keen. A footfall in the shop, soft as it was, caused him to look up. He saw a slight girlish figure, her cloak pulled tightly about her, a pair of bright eyes peering from beneath the hood. The old man gave a grunt of dissatisfaction. Many of his customers were women but he liked them none the more because of their sex. They generally came to sell, not to buy, and most of them knew how to drive a hard bargain. He shuffled into the shop with a scowl on his lined yellow face. "What d'ye want?" he growled. Most girls would have been nervous at such a reception. Not so this one. "I want to sell this brooch. How much will you give me for it?" said she, undauntedly. "Don't want to buy it. Go somewhere else." "I shan't. Too much trouble. Besides, you're going to buy it, dear Dr. Mountchance." The imploring eyes, the beseeching voice, soft and musical, the modest yet assured manner, were too much for the old man. Unconscious of the destiny awaiting her, Lavinia was employing the same tenderness of look, the same captivating pathos of tone as when two years later she, as Polly Peachum, sang "Oh ponder well," and won the heart of the Duke of Bolton. "H'm, h'm," grunted Mountchance, "you pretty witch. Must I humour ye?" "Of course you must. You're so kind and always ready to help others." The doctor showed his yellow fangs in a ghastly grin that gave a skull-like look to his dried face.