But it was a consolation to see her when she walked out with a French maid, a couple of children, and a little dog hanging on to her by a blue ribbon. She always held down her head then--her head with the drooping black ringlets. The virtuous and well-disposed avoided her. I have seen the Square-keeper himself look puzzled as she passed; and Lady Kicklebury walking by with Miss K., her daughter, turn away from Mrs. Stafford Molyneux, and fling back at her a ruthless Parthian glance that ought to have killed any woman of decent sensibility. That wretched woman, meanwhile, with her rouged cheeks (for rouge it _is_, Miss Clapperclaw swears, and who is a better judge?) has walked on conscious, and yet somehow braving out the Street. You could read pride of her beauty, pride of her fine clothes, shame of her position, in her downcast black eyes. As for Mademoiselle Trampoline, her French maid, she would stare the sun itself out of countenance. One day she tossed up her head as she passed under our windows with a look [Illustration: THE LADY WHOM NOBODY KNOWS.] of scorn that drove Miss Clapperclaw back to the fire-place again. It was Mrs. Stafford Molyneux’s children, however, whom I pitied the most. Once her boy, in a flaring tartan, went up to speak to Master Roderick Lacy, whose maid was engaged ogling a policeman; and the children were going to make friends, being united with a hoop which Master Molyneux had, when Master Roderick’s maid, rushing up, clutched her charge to her arms, and hurried away, leaving little Molyneux sad and wondering. “Why won’t he play with me, mamma?” Master Molyneux asked--and his mother’s face blushed purple as she walked away. “Ah--Heaven help us and forgive us!” said I; but Miss C. can never forgive the mother or child; and she clapped her hands for joy one day when we saw the shutters up, bills in the windows, a carpet hanging out over the balcony, and a crowd of shabby Jews about the steps--giving token that the reign of Mrs. Stafford Molyneux was over. The pastry-cooks and their trays, the bay and the grey, the Brougham and the groom, the noblemen and their cabs, were all gone; and the tradesmen in the neighbourhood were crying out that they were done. “Serve the odious minx right!” says Miss C.; and she played at picquet that night with more vigour than I have known her manifest for these last ten years. What is it that makes certain old ladies so savage upon certain subjects? Miss C. is a good woman; pays her rent and her tradesmen; gives plenty to the poor; is brisk with her tongue--kind-hearted in the main; but if Mrs. Stafford Molyneux and her children were plunged into a cauldron of boiling vinegar, I think my revered friend would not take her out. THE MAN IN POSSESSION.