I wandered among the alleys and windings of the Vale of Health, noting the villas with peeling plaster and the weather-boarded and half-dilapidated cottages that make the place peculiar; and I was ascending a steep hillock with willows at the foot of it and the level ridge of the Spaniards Road running like a railway embankment past the pines at the top, when, chancing to turn my head, I saw what appeared to be the very place for me. It could not have been very long empty, for I had passed its door, an ivy-green one with lace curtains behind its upper panels of glass, without noticing the usual signs of uninhabitation. Then I remembered the approaching Quarter Day and smiled. The chances were that somebody had done a "moonlight flit" and had left the lace curtains up in order that his going might not be observed. There was no doubt, as I could see from where I stood, about the place being untenanted now, nor that it would not remain so for very long. I stood for a moment examining it from half-way up the hillock. There was not much of it to examine. It was very small, fronted with stucco, and had a little square verandah built out on wooden posts over its tiny garden. More than that I could hardly see of it, but it adjoined a much larger house, and to this I turned my eyes. This larger house was a low, French-windowed dwelling, with a pleasantly eaved and flat-pitched roof, very refreshing to think of in these days of Garden City roofs and diminutive dormers; and its garden was well kept, and gay with virginia stock borders and delphinium and Canterbury bells in the beds behind. It seemed likely that formerly the two houses had been one. I was descending the hillock for a closer view when I remembered that I could hardly expect to be shown round that day. I looked at my watch. It was half-past twelve, and my appointment, which was with Pepper, was not for another hour. There would be plenty of time for me to walk round by my turreted place and back by Hampstead Lane. I left the Vale of Health, crossed the Viaduct, and continued my saunter. But I walked slowly, and in a deepening abstraction. The sight of that little house had set my thoughts running on my _fiancée_ again. And as I presently took that little house, and married my _fiancée_ not long afterwards, and as, moreover, my meditation of that morning has a good deal to do with my tale, I had better state at the beginning what the trouble was, and have done with it.