Shall I own that, for old time’s sake, I went upstairs, and “’ad it done”--that correct likeness, price one shilling? Would Some One (I have said, I think, that the party in question is well married in a distant island) like to have the thing, I wonder, and be reminded of a man whom she knew in life’s prime, with brown curly locks, as she looked on the effigy of this elderly gentleman, with a forehead as bare as a billiard ball? As I went up and down that darkling stair, the ghosts of the Prior children peeped out from the banisters; the little faces smiled in the twilight: it may be wounds (of the heart) throbbed and bled again,--oh, how freshly and keenly! How infernally I have suffered behind that door in that room--I mean that one where Plugwell now lives. Confound Plugwell! I wonder what that woman thinks of me as she sees me shaking my fist at the door? Do you think me mad, madam? I don’t care if you do. Do you think when I spoke anon of the ghosts of Prior’s children, I mean that any of them are dead? None are, that I know of. A great hulking Bluecoat boy, with fluffy whiskers, spoke to me not long since, in an awful bass voice, and announced his name as “Gus Prior.” And “How’s Elizabeth?” he added, nodding his bullet head. Elizabeth, indeed, you great vulgar boy! Elizabeth,--and, by the way, how long we have been keeping her waiting! You see, as I beheld her, a heap of memories struck upon me, and I could not help chattering; when of course--and you are perfectly right, only you might just as well have left the observation alone: for I knew quite well what you were going to say--when I had much better have held my tongue. Elizabeth means a history to me. She came to me at a critical period of my life. Bleeding and wounded from the conduct of that other individual (by her present name of Mrs. O’D--her present _O’D_-ous name--I say, I will never--never call her)--desperately wounded and miserable on my return from a neighbouring capital, I went back to my lodgings in Beak Street, and there there grew up a strange intimacy between me and my landlady’s young daughter. I told her my story--indeed, I believe I told anybody who would listen. She seemed to compassionate me. She would come wistfully into my rooms, bringing me my gruel and things (I could scarcely bear to eat for awhile after--after that affair to which I may have alluded before)--she used to come to me, and she used to pity me, and I used to tell her all, and to tell her over and over again. Days and days have I passed tearing my heart out in that second-floor room which answers to the name of Plugwell now. Afternoon after afternoon have I spent there, and poured out my story of love and wrong to Elizabeth, showed her that waistcoat I told you of--that glove (her hand wasn’t so very small either)--her letters, those two or three vacuous, meaningless letters, with “My dear sir, mamma hopes you will come to tea;” or, “If dear Mr. Batchelor