In that poor tenement there were no secrets. A rickety staircase, crudely built against the retaining wall of the only living room on the ground floor, led steeply to an apartment above, and culminated in an opening that suggested a trapdoor. The walls, roughly paneled, were well provided with shelves and pegs. The back door was fastened with a latch, a contrivance rarely seen in the London of to-day. The front window looked out into a badly-paved court girt by tumbledown stables. A smaller window at the back revealed a dismal yard darkened by lofty walls. Although little more than a stone's throw removed from the busy Mile End Road, the place was singularly quiet. It was already dead, and only waited the coming of men with pickaxes and crowbars to sweep away the ruins. The boy heard his name whispered rather than spoken. The sound galvanized him into vivid consciousness. "Doctor," he said, earnestly, "you will come back?" "Yes, yes; within half an hour. Tell your mother to expect me." Philip ran up the stairs. Long practice had enabled him to move with a minimum of noise. It was pitiful to see the manner in which he emerged, with stealthy activity, into the creaking loft above. Here, at first glance, there was an astonishing degree of comfort. Odd pieces of worn carpet, neatly joined, covered the floor. The two windows, facing only to the front of the dwelling, were curtained. The whitewashed walls were almost hidden by cuttings from the colored periodicals published during the previous Christmas season. A screen divided the room into two compartments, each containing a tiny bed. On one of these, propped up with pillows, lay the wasted figure of a woman over whose face the shadows were falling fast. The extreme thinness, the waxen pallor, the delicate texture of debilitated skin and unnatural brilliancy of the eyes, gave her a remarkably youthful appearance. This fantastic trick of death in life accentuated the resemblance between mother and son. The boy, too, was sharply outlined by hunger, and, in the fading light of a March day, the difference between the dread tokens of approaching collapse and the transient effects of a scanty regimen on a vigorous youth was not readily distinguishable. "Do you want anything, mother dear?" said the boy, laying his hand tenderly on the clammy forehead. "Only to ask you, Phil, what it was that the doctor told you." The voice was low and sweet--the diction that of an educated woman. The boy, too, though his tones were strong and harsh, spoke with the accent of good breeding. His manner and words gained some distinction from a slight touch of French elegance and precision. This was only noticeable in repose. When excited, or moved to deep feeling, the Continental veneer acquired at the Lycée in Dieppe instantly vanished, and he became the strenuous, emphatic Briton he undoubtedly was by birth and breeding.