In the middle of the day there was a light lunch, at which Mrs. Grace made nothing of the disappointment of the morning, and Edith passed the subject almost silently. Then the afternoon dragged on through all the inexhaustible sunlight to dinner, and each woman felt a great sense of relief when the meal arrived, for it marked the close of that black, blank day, and all the time between dinner and bed-time is but the twilight dawn of another day. An after-dinner custom of the two ladies was that Mrs. Grace should sit in her easy chair at one side of the window in summer, and Edith at the other, while the girl read an evening paper aloud until the light failed or the old woman fell asleep. It was eight o'clock, and still the unwearying light pursued and enveloped the hours pertinaciously. The great reflux of men had long since set in and died down low. Now and then a brisk footstep passed the window with sharp beating sound; now and then a long and echoing footfall lingered from end to end of the opposite flagway; now and then an empty four-wheeled cab lumbered sleepily by. The fresh, low voice of the girl bodied forth the words clearly, but with no emotion or aid of inflection beyond the markings of the punctuation on the page. She had been accustomed to read certain parts of the paper in a particular order, and she began in this order and went on. The words she read and uttered conveyed no meaning to her own mind, and if at any moment she had been stopped and asked what was the subject of the article, she would have been obliged to wait and trust to the unconsciously-recording memory of her ear for the words her voice had uttered. The old woman's eyes were open. She was broad awake, but not listening to a word that Edith read. The girl's voice had a pleasing soothing effect, and she was sadly fancying how they two could manage to live on the narrow means now adjudged to her by fate. Suddenly there was a sharper, brisker sound than usual in the street. The old woman awoke to observation. The sound approached rapidly, and suddenly stopped close at hand with the harsh tearing noise of a wheel-tire grating along the curbstone. Mrs. Grace leaned forward and looked out of the window. A hansom cab had drawn up at the door, and a man was alighting. "There's the gentleman who was here yesterday with Mr. Leigh," said Mrs. Grace drawing back from the window. Edith paused a moment, and then went on reading aloud in the same mechanical voice as before. "I wonder could he have forgotten his gloves or his cane yesterday?" said Mrs. Grace, whose curiosity was slightly aroused. Any excitement, however slight, would be welcome now. "I don't know, mother. If he forgot anything he must have left it downstairs. I saw nothing here, and I heard of nothing." "If you please, Mrs. Grace, Mr. Hanbury has called and wishes to see you," said the landlady's daughter from the door of the room.