“For Hasluck,” replied my father, “it will be much more convenient. He grumbles every time at the distance.” “I have never been quite able to understand,” said my mother, “why Mr. Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be plenty of solicitors in the City.” “He had heard of me,” explained my father. “A curious old fellow--likes his own way of doing things. It's not everyone who would care for him as a client. But I seem able to manage him.” Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It was a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered, with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the Foundling Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money. “This,” said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom into the smaller room adjoining, “I shall make your mother's boudoir. We will have the walls in lavender and maple green--she is fond of soft tones--and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will put her writing-table.” My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room. “You will be quiet here,” said my father, “and we can shut out the bed and the washstand with a screen.” Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent--eight and sixpence a week, including attendance--was somewhat more than at the time I ought to have afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my stout landlady, in later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass plate with my father's name upon the door. “Luke Kelver, Solicitor. Office hours, 10 till 4.” A medical student thought he occupied my mother's boudoir. He was a dull dog, full of tiresome talk. But I made acquaintanceship with him; and often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag. The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her soft curls curtaining her quiet face. CHAPTER VI. OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE LOVE-LIT EYES. “There's nothing missing,” said my mother, “so far as I can find out. Depend upon it, that's the explanation: she has got frightened and has run away. “But what was there to frighten her?” said my father, pausing with a decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.