‘But you have not been here long, you said?’ said Myles. ‘No. Only eighteen months, since my father died abroad, and my uncle asked me to come and live here with him, else I should have had no home.’ She spoke with a quietness amounting to sadness, and Myles felt sure that there was sadness in her life, though she spoke so cheerfully. ‘Were you sorry or glad to come to England?’ he ventured to ask. ‘Oh, sorry. Every association I had with it was unpleasant; whereas I had had many pleasures at different times abroad; and it is so cold, and dull, and _triste_ here.’ ‘For any one that has no friends----’ he began. ‘Like me,’ she said. ‘It must be rather dull. Here is your place, I think.’ ‘Yes,’ said Adrienne, pausing with her hand on the latch of the gate. ‘I would ask you to come in, only it would disturb my uncle so much. But I shall see you again, and another evening I hope you will come in--will you?’ ‘You are very kind,’ said Myles, secretly feeling immensely flattered at the invitation. ‘If it wouldn’t be intruding----’ ‘Not at all. I should like to know what you think about one or two things. I know you think, by the books I have seen you reading, and I have a burning curiosity to know what you think.’ Myles suggested that his subjects--work, wages, politics--might not be very interesting to a young lady. ‘It depends so much upon the kind of young lady, I think,’ said she, smiling. ‘Well, good night; I am obliged for your kindness.’ With a gracious inclination of her head she was gone--had passed swiftly up the walk, opened the door, and entered the house. Myles stood for some time on the spot where she had left him, staring at the house. He looked at it well. ‘Stonegate. Blake Street.’ The whole of Blake Street was part of the Mallorys’ property--Sebastian Mallory’s property, to gain which he had toiled not, neither had he spun; but it had come to him, and was his to do as he would with. Blake Street was a long street, composed, for about half its length, of smallish houses, in which lived quiet, steady, proper people. Several of the door-plates bore the indications of dressmakers; there were two dentists, a veterinary surgeon, and an undertaker. The rest were quiet, dull, dingy-looking private residences. Beyond a certain point all this changed. Blake Street became a mere confusion of pasteboard terraces, half-finished houses, single strips of houses, and general disorder and chaos--a brick and plaster abomination of desolation. And then came a lonely stretch of street, quite without houses, with an unfinished footpath on either side, skirting a waste of what really had been heath, and was now little else. Some tufts of heather might be found growing there in their season, and the air that blew over it was sharp and keen.