Sometimes a neighbour looked in, and spoke of dilapidations and the indifference of the landlord; of the reductions at a High Road linendraper's, and the whooping-cough. Sometimes a curate called to sell tickets for a concert more elementary than his sermons. In the afternoon she walked to Tooting Bec and stared at the bushes; in the evening she betook herself to the "circulating library," where _Lady Audley's Secret_ and _The Wide, Wide World_ were displayed and the proprietor said he hadn't heard of Meredith--"perhaps she had made a mistake in the name?" God help her! She was guilty and she had left a husband desolate; but the music that she had dreamed of was the opera on Wagner nights; the books that she had expected were copies containing signatures that were the envy of the autograph-collector; the circle that had been her aim was the world of literature and art. She lived at Balham; she saw the curate, and she heard about the dilapidations in the neighbour's roof. One year merged into another; and if she lived for forty more, the neighbour and the curate would be her All. CHAPTER XI When five years had passed after the divorce, the Liberal Party came into power again, and George Heriot, Q.C., M.P., was appointed Solicitor-General. His work and ambitions had not sufficed to mend the gap in his life; but it had been in work and ambition that he endeavoured to find assuagement of the wound. Perhaps eagerness had never been so keen in him after his wife went as while he was contesting the borough that he represented now; perhaps he had never realised the inadequacy of success so fully as he did to-day when one of the richest prizes of his profession was obtained. Conscious that the anticipated flavour was lacking, the steps to which he might look forward still lost much of their allurement. Were he promoted to the post of Attorney-General, and raised to the Bench, he foresaw that it would elate him no more than it elated him now, as Sir George Heriot, and a very wealthy man, to recall the period when, as a struggling Junior, he had sat up half the night to earn a guinea.