At the time this history begins, Mr. Trevor was seated in the drawing-room, the best room in the house. The Fords occupied the front parlor below, where the furniture was moderate and homely; but all the skill of the upholsterer had been displayed above. The room had two long windows looking out over the common, not at this moment a very cheerful prospect. There was nothing outside but mist and dampness, made more dismal by incipient frost, and full of the sentiment of cold, a chill that went to your heart. The prospect inside was not much adapted to warm or cheer in such circumstances. The windows were cut down to the floor, as is usual in suburban houses, and though the draught had been shut out as much as possible by list and stamped leather, and by the large rugs of silky white fur which lay in front of each window, yet there were still little impertinent whiffs of air blowing about. And the moral effect was still more chilly. It was not an artistic room, according to the fashion of the present day, or one indeed in which any taste to speak of had been shown. The walls were white with gilded ornaments, the curtains were blue, the carpet showed large bouquets of flowers upon a light ground. There were large prints, very large, and not very interesting, royal marriages and christenings, hanging, one in the center of each wall. Thus it will be seen there was nothing to distinguish it from a hundred other unremarkable and unattractive apartments of the ordinary British kind. A large folding screen was disposed round the door to keep out the draught, and the folding-doors which led into Mr. Trevor’s bedroom behind were veiled with curtains of the same blue as those of the windows. The old man was seated by a large fire in a comfortable easy-chair, with a writing-table within reach of his hand. Mr. Trevor was not a man of imposing presence; he was little and very thin, wrapped in a dark-colored dressing-gown, with a high collar in which he seemed pilloried, and a brown wig which imparted a very aged juvenility to his small and wrinkled face. Gray hairs harmonize and soften wrinkles; but the smooth chin and bright brown locks of this little old man gave him a somewhat elfish appearance, something like that of an elderly bird. He sat with a pen in his hand making notes upon a large document opened out upon the writing-table, and his action and a little unconscious chirp to which he gave vent now and then increased his resemblance to an alert sparrow. And indeed, it might have been a claw which Mr. Trevor was holding up with a quill in it, and his little air of triumphant success and self-content, his head held on one side, and the dab he made from time to time upon his paper, gave him very much the air of a sparrow. He had laid down his “Times,” which hung in a much crumpled condition, like a table-cover, over a small round table on his other hand, in order to make this sudden note, whatever it might be, and as he made it he chuckled.