Miss Burnett occupied a very big house in the dullest street in Bloomsbury--a dismal _cul de sac_, in which there was almost always an elderly organ-grinder playing “Home, sweet home,” or the “Old Hundredth,” with a little group of squalid children gathered round him. The big house smelt like a tomb, and was almost as rarely opened as if it had been one; for the butcher-boy who brought Miss Burnett’s mutton-chop, or the half-pound of steak or three-quarters of liver, upon which Miss Burnett’s servant was wont to make her repast, handed his wares across the area-gate, and exchanged no word of comment with the grim damsel who received them, knowing very well that the lady of the house sat at her favourite window in the front parlour, with her open Bible before her, and a watchful eye upon the outer world, which some sentimental Christians might have thought scarcely consistent with so much piety. The grim damsel who admitted Roderick Lowther to Miss Burnett’s darksome abode relaxed her ordinary sternness of visage into something faintly resembling a smile as she recognized her mistress’s nephew. “Your aunt has been very ill since you were last here, Mr. Lowther,” the woman said, in answer to Roderick’s inquiry. “She was very bad with her asthma all the winter; but the warm spring weather brought her round again.” “Yes,” thought the young man, “the spring weather always does bring her round,--and always will, I suppose, till I am dead and in my grave.” He was ushered into the dining-room while this irreverent idea was in his mind; and the next minute he was seated opposite to his aunt, inquiring tenderly about her asthma. The dining-room was very dismal. There was more mahogany furniture and brown damask than is compatible with the smallest ray of cheerfulness, and the walls were rendered ghastly by some hideous preparations painted in asphaltum, and exhibiting gigantic cracks that looked like gory, yawning wounds,--preparations which, on account of their smoky nature and revolting choice of subject, were supposed to be the work of the old masters.