Theodore drove off in the dog-cart with all the Vicarage family at the gate waving their hands to him, as if he had been an old friend, and with four Vicarage dogs barking at him. He went back to London that night, and wrote to Miss Newton, asking leave to call upon her upon a matter relating to one of her old pupils on the following day. He should take silence to mean consent, and would be with her at four in the afternoon, if he did not receive a telegram to forbid him. He worked in his chambers all the morning, and at a little after three set out to walk to Lambeth. The address was 51, Wedgewood Street, near the Lambeth Road. It was not a long walk, and it was not a pleasant one, for a seasonable fog was gathering when Theodore left the Temple, and it thickened as he crossed Westminster Bridge, where the newly-lighted lamps made faint yellow patches in the dense brown atmosphere. Under these conditions it took him some time to find Wedgewood Street, and that particular house which had the honour of sheltering Sarah Newton. It was a very shabby old street. The shops were of the meanest order, and the houses which were not shops looked as if they were mostly let off to the struggling class of lodgers; but it was a street that had evidently seen better days, for the houses were large and substantially built, and the doorways had once been handsome and architectural—houses which had been the homes of prosperous citizens when Lambeth was out of town, and when the perfume of bean blossom and new-mown hay found its way into Wedgewood Street. The ground-floor of Number 51 was occupied by a shoemaker, a shoemaker who had turned his parlour into a shop, who made to measure, but was not above executing repairs neatly. The front door being open, Theodore walked straight upstairs to the first-floor landing, where there was a neat little Doulton ware oil-lamp burning on a carved oak bracket, and where he saw Miss Newton’s name painted in bold black letters upon a terra-cotta coloured door. The stairs were cleaner than they generally are in such a house, and the landing was spotless. He rang a bell, and the door was promptly opened by a lady, whom he took to be Miss Newton. She was rather below middle height, strongly built, but of a neat, compact figure. She was decidedly plain, and her iron grey hair was coarse and wiry; but she had large bright eyes which beamed with good nature and intelligence. Her black stuff gown and narrow linen collar, the knot of scarlet ribbon at her throat, and the linen cuffs turned back over perfectly-fitting sleeves, were all the pink of neatness, and suited her as no other kind of dress would have done. The trim figure, the bright eyes, and the small white hands made a favourable impression upon Theodore, in spite of the lady’s homeliness of feature and complexion.