She turned down Judd Street, forlornly scanning the intersecting squalor. The tenements around her were not attractive. On the parlour-floor, limp chintz curtains hid the interiors, but the steps and the areas, and here and there a frouzy head and arm protruding for a milkcan, were strong in suggestion of slatternly discomfort. In Brunswick Square the aspect was more cheerful, but the rooms here were obviously above her means. She walked along, and came unexpectedly into Guilford Street, almost opposite the house where she had given herself to Tony. The sudden sight of it was not the shock that she would have imagined it would prove; indeed, she was sensible of a dull sort of wonder at the absence of sensation. But for the veranda and confirmatory number, the outside would have borne no significance to her; yet it had been in that house----What a landmark in her life's history was represented by that house!' What emotions had flooded her soul behind the stolid frontage that she had nearly passed without recognising it; how she had wept and suffered, and prayed and joyed within the walls that would have borne no significance to her but for a veranda and the number that proclaimed it was so! The thoughts were deliberate; the past was not flashed back at her, she retraced it half tenderly in the midst of her trouble. None the less, the idea of taking up her quarters on the spot was eminently repugnant, and she turned several corners before she permitted herself to ring a bell. Her summons was answered by a flurried servant-girl, who on hearing that she wanted a lodging, became helplessly incoherent--as is the manner of servant-girls where lodgings are let--and fled to the basement, calling "missis." Mary contemplated the hat-stand until the "missis" advanced towards her along the passage. There was a flavour of abandoned breakfast about missis, an air of interruption; and when she perceived that the stranger on the threshold was a young woman, and a charming woman, and a woman by herself, the air of interruption that she had been struggling to conceal all the way up the kitchen-stairs began to be coupled with an expression of defensive virtue. "I am looking for a room," said Mary. "Yes," said the householder, eyeing her askance. "You have one to let, I think, by the card?" "Yes, there's a room." She made no movement to show it, however; she stood on the mat nursing her elbows. "Can you let me see it--if it isn't inconvenient so early?" "Oh, I suppose so," said the landlady. She preceded her to the top-floor, but with no alacrity. "This is it," she said. It was a back attic of the regulation pattern: brown drugget, yellow chairs, and a bed of parti-coloured clothing. Nevertheless, it seemed to be clean, and Mary was prepared to take anything. "What is the rent?" she asked wearily. "Did you say your husband would be joining you?" "My husband? No, I'm a widow."