Mr. Carver lived and worked in a dusty, dingy, dreary house near Mercery Lane. His rooms were above--he was a bachelor, dry and crusty--and his offices below. Two clerks, as lean as their master, worked in the dismal outer office, and in the inner apartment, the window of which looked on to a mews, Mr. Carver sat all day, and often far into the night. The appearance of so charming and blooming a woman as Dora quite lighted up the musty, fusty den. Her fresh beauty had little effect upon Carver, who regarded women as the root of all evil. The generally accepted root of all evil is money. This he approved of and hoarded; but women--he could not bear them, save in the light of clients, and then they gave him endless trouble. "Mr. Carver," said Dora, facing the saturnine lawyer on the other side of the table, "I have called to see you about my financial position. I was, as you know, a ward of Mr. Edermont's"--Carver nodded--"and he has left me the Red House and two hundred a year." Mr. Carver nodded again. "But what about my own income of five hundred a year?" "What five hundred a year?" said Carver grimly. "The income which was left me by my parents." "I was not aware that any income had been left to you by your parents, nor, for the matter of that--if you will excuse me--was I aware that you had any parents." "What do you mean, sir?" asked Dora, sitting up very straight. "Why," said the lawyer meditatively, "it is not hard for you to gather my meaning. I never saw your parents--I never heard mention of them. All I know is that my late client arrived here with you, and shortly after his arrival purchased the Red House. You were then a year old, and as twenty years have now elapsed, it makes you twenty-one," added Mr. Carver in parenthesis. "My late client said that you were an orphan, Carew by name, whom he intended to bring up; but as to parents, or history, or income--I know nothing about them, absolutely nothing." "But Mr. Edermont assured me that I had five hundred a year of my own!" stammered Dora, taken aback by this plain speaking. "He handed me money from time to time, and stated frequently that he was saving the rest of the income to give me when I came of age. If this is so, I ought to be entitled to at least eight thousand pounds."