She had been more than a week an inmate of Mrs. Casey’s house, when that thrifty personage--who had not yet, as she elegantly termed it, “seen the colour of Miss Blake’s money”--made her usual afternoon _entrée_ into her lodger’s sitting-room, with an ominous long-shaped piece of bluish-white paper in her hand. Mrs. Casey--whose wits were, like those of many others of her class and kind sharpened by the instincts of self-preservation necessary for her calling--was surprised on her entrance by a change in her lodger’s countenance and manner, for which, seeing that Miss Blake had to the best of her belief, received neither visitor nor letter, the worthy landlady could by no means account. There was a feverish flush; a light which, though it was scarcely joy, was wonderfully revivifying in that beautiful face; and Mrs. Casey, who had entered the room with one of the least tender of human purposes, felt even _her_ prosaic fancy warm beneath its softening influence. Nor was the woman’s surprise concerning her mysterious tenant lessened when the latter said with a faint blush, and hurriedly: “Mrs. Casey, I was going to ask for you; ah, that is your bill; and,” glancing at it slightly, “perhaps you will help me to pack up my few things, for _I am going home_!” She said the words, there was no mistaking _that_, exultingly; and Mrs. Casey (wondering greatly, for had not this to the end mysterious young person told her that she had _no_ home?) uttered what was intended to be a civil congratulation on this apparently altered condition in her affairs. But Honor heard her not. With a nervous eagerness which permitted of no pause either for thought or speech, she continued the few and simple preparations for her departure. Drawing forth her purse, she paid, with an absence of all prudence, and a degree of submission to exorbitant charges which caused Mrs. Casey bitterly to regret her own moderation, the “little account” which that lady obsequiously handed to her, and, when all was ready, she shook hands nervously with the woman with whom one of the thousand chances of life had made her acquainted, and whom she was never likely, on this side the grave, to meet again. “I wish you good-day, miss, and a pleasant journey,” Mrs. Casey said, taking her last inquisitorial survey of her late lodger through the open window of the cab which had been summoned to convey “Miss Blake” to the station--“and if you should know any friends, gentlemen preferred, who want a quiet lodging, good attendance, and everything found, perhaps you’d be good enough to think of No. 29.”