Produced by Chuck Greif, ellinora and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE HUMAN INTEREST THE HUMAN INTEREST A STUDY IN INCOMPATIBILITIES BY VIOLET HUNT AUTHOR OF “A HARD WOMAN,” “UNKIST UNKIND,” “THE MAIDEN’S PROGRESS.” [Illustration: colophon, FAIRE ET TAIRE] HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY CHICAGO AND NEW YORK MDCCCXCIX COPYRIGHT 1899, BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO THE HUMAN INTEREST CHAPTER I One dull afternoon--and it was in summer--a London authoress of some repute, whose nom-de-guerre was Egidia, was wandering along the pavement of a dull and imposing street in Newcastle. Day was beginning to decline, but the approach of evening was not alone responsible for the heart-felt ejaculation of the South-country woman, “Oh, this Northern gloom!” as she walked along under the smoky pall that, summer and winter, shrouds the city. She stood still presently, carefully scanning the solemn, stately houses with pillared porticos all of the self-same pattern, which run in an interminable row to a vanishing point seemingly far beyond conjecture. “Each of the houses is exactly like the other,” she murmured to herself. “In which, I wonder, does the Muse of Newcastle hold her court? Like most muses, she gave no number. I must judge by out-sides. Oh, here we are; green Liberty curtains in the windows--a more daring green on the door--a knocker of mediæval tendencies! I will try.” She went up the steps of No. 59 Savile Street and rang the bell, and stood there pensive. “I promised to call on this woman, and I am doing it, but I shall be bored. She will talk of Ibsen, and Meredith, and tell me she had read Plato through before she was fifteen. She will take herself seriously, and me too, and inundate me with questions about the people in London. All these provincials do. Still, she pressed me so prettily to call that I could not say No. But I shall be bored!--Is Mrs. Mortimer Elles at home?” she enquired of the handsome, full-blown parlour maid who opened the door widely and invitingly. “Oh, yes, ma’am--this is Mrs. Elles’ day at home.” “Much too familiar!” thought Egidia, as she followed the swing of the maid’s cap streamers through portièred doorways and past Syrian shawl-draped cornices, and other pathetically futile attempts to conceal the impossible architecture of a commonplace house, built in a bad period, and decorated originally on the worst principles.