She little dreamed all this while that there was “some one” on the look-out to find her--one who was fully as anxious to become a visitor to her as she could be to receive one. She was all unconscious that her round, attractive face had won the heart of “the heir of the haughty Grahame”--that is, so much of the article as he possessed. Alas! too, like many others of his sex, as far as woman was concerned, his heart greatly resembled a garden-grown cabbage, luxuriant in leaf, but without the solid centre, which was necessary to make it of value to the possessor. She had no inkling that while she longed for some face, bearing a kind expression, to come shining through her doorway, that a suitor for her--love--was roaming through the more retired of the west-end streets, examining apartments to let, making kind inquiries after imaginary persons of impatient landladies, in the strong hope, that he should at last “come shining through the doorway” to her, as though by the most charming accident in the world. But this swain was not successful. Something more than the reverse, for he pursued his investigation in a manner so peculiar that in several cases he was suspected of being after the time-piece, or any stray purse or plate, instead of the lodgings; and was, consequently, answered with abruptness, not permitted to be left by himself for an instant, and was shown to the door with all possible speed. In other instances, he was imagined to be an individual shrinking from an interview with sharp and urgent creditors, whose claims he could not liquidate. In nearly every case, he was considered impertinently inquisitive, and received monosyllables in reply, but not in satisfaction of the object of his questions, as that formed precisely the point upon which the interrogated joined issue with him, especially if the lady with diminished resources who let apartments to help out her income, or who had “more room than she wanted,” happened to have a daughter old enough to be thought of by young men--and to think of them. Then Malcolm Grahame observed, as he questioned, the elderly landlady’s face redden, her brow contract, her lips purse up, her eyes brighten, and her conversational powers stricken with a sudden frost; and he found himself gradually backed, inch by inch, down the stairs, along the passage too narrow mostly to be dignified with the name of a hall, until he was fairly in the street, and then the door was slammed in his face. “Cursedly rude,” thought he: “devilish odd, too, they should treat a person of my standing and appearance in such a beastly fashion.”