She felt spotted in Mrs. Benson's spotless dwelling--largely because it was Mrs. Benson's, partly because a smell of fried herrings drifted in daily from the street. She felt herself the chosen of a servant, one for whom a clown had held battle; and then she found herself resenting the phrases, growing hot over them. A servant--Mrs. Benson, that staunch protectress! A clown--Struan--his thin frame throbbing with fire, and his eyes of a hawk in a cage, farset, communing with invisible things! Why, when he was rapt in his work he never saw her at all. She was a speck at his feet! He had sent her away once. “I'm busy,” he had said, without looking at her; and she had gone away on tiptoe. These things vexed her to remember, and she felt that Mrs. Benson's dwelling could not be hers. Mrs. Benson, too, it must be owned, had an incumbrance, which she kept as far as might be in the lower regions of her house, but which was now and again encountered on the stair--a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt--sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ne'er-do-well, whom it was his mother's cross and crown to keep in complete idleness. He cast dreadful looks, as of an equal in snugness, a fellow-minion, at the chiselled profile of our goddess, and was not long before he tried for a full-faced effect. Sanchia's eyes of clear amaze should have cut him down, but they did not. His “Morning, Miss,” was daily reminder of a shared clay. Sanchia made herself inaccessible, and Mrs. Benson agonised. To apologise for her son had been as futile as to make excuses for death; but she tried it. “You'll overlook the partiality of a mother, Miss Percival? What am I to do? It's not that I want him to lap syrup from a spoon--far from that. Idleness leads to impiety, and impiety anywhere, from Tattersal's to the public, we all know. But think of what stings me. I can't abide the thought that here am I, large Mrs. Benson, with money to spare, turning my back upon my fatherless child. Yet nothing short of that will do it.” Sanchia readily excused her; and then she turned her own back upon the Fulham Road. Pimlico found her a lodging, at the gates of whose dingy mysteries were parks, Westminster, the sky and the river, eternal things, making for tranquillity.