What his friend did say in a moment was: “Now you’ve got it I’m very glad. It’s easier for me.” And he effected a poor strained grin. “I should think so!” Hyacinth exclaimed. “If you hadn’t done your job you’d have paid for it.” Schinkel mumbled as for accommodation while he lingered, and then as Hyacinth turned away, putting in his door-key, brought out: “And if you don’t do yours so will you.” “Yes, as you say, they themselves go straight! Good-night.” And our young man let himself in. The passage and staircase were never lighted and the lodgers either groped their way bedward with the infallibility of practice or scraped the wall with a casual match the effect of which, in the milder gloom of day, was a rude immensity of laceration. Hyacinth’s room was a second floor back, and as he approached it he was startled by seeing a light proceed from the crevice under the door, the imperfect fitting of which figured to him thus as quite squalid. He stopped and considered this new note of his crisis, his first impulse being to connect it with the case just presented by Schinkel—since what could anything that touched him now be but a part of the same business? It was doubtless all in order that some second portent should now await him there. Yet it occurred to him that when he went out to call on Lady Aurora after tea he must simply have left a tallow candle burning, and that it showed a cynical spirit on the part of his landlady, who could be so close-fisted for herself, not to have gone in and put it out. Lastly it came over him that he had had a visitor in his absence and that the visitor had taken possession of his apartment till his return, seeking such poor sources of comfort as were perfectly just. When he opened the door this last prevision proved the correct one, though the figure in occupation was not one of the possible presences that had loomed. Mr. Vetch sat beside the little table at which Hyacinth did his writing; he showed a weary head on a supporting hand and eyes apparently closed. But he looked up when his young man appeared. “Oh I didn’t hear you; you’re very quiet.” “I come in softly when I’m late, for the sake of the house—though I’m bound to say I’m the only lodger who has that refinement. Besides, you’ve been asleep,” Hyacinth said. “No, I’ve not been asleep,” the old man returned. “I don’t sleep much nowadays.” “Then you’ve been plunged in meditation.” “Yes, I’ve been thinking.” With which Mr. Vetch explained that the woman of the house had begun by refusing him admittance without proper assurances that his intentions were pure and that he was moreover the oldest friend Mr. Robinson had in the world. He had been there an hour; he had thought he might find him by coming late.