THE STRANGE TRANSFIGURATION OF HANNAH STUBBS BY FLORENCE MARRYAT AUTHOR OF “_Love’s Conflict_,” “_My Own Child_,” “_My Sister the Actress_,” _etc., etc., etc._ “_There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,_ _Than are dreamt of in your philosophy._”--Hamlet LONDON HUTCHINSON AND CO. 34, PATERNOSTER ROW MDCCCXCVI. CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX THE STRANGE TRANSFIGURATION OF HANNAH STUBBS CHAPTER I. “Signor Ricardo, Prof. of the Italian Language!” That was the legend that was engraved on the small brass plate that surmounted the bell that admitted visitors to Mrs. Battleby’s lodging-house in Soho. Signor Ricardo was everything that was estimable in Mrs. Battleby’s eyes, only he was, as she observed to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Blamey, “a Mystery”. He was a tall, attenuated man, who stooped slightly in the shoulders--had dark-grey eyes, keen as those of a hawk, and shaded by bushy eyebrows--a perfect aquiline nose--and a grave, almost solemn mouth, which seldom smiled, and ended in a pointed beard, like that of Vandyke. He was very poor, being an Italian refugee, whose estates had been confiscated for some political error, but he was eminently a gentleman of the _ancienne noblesse_, and preserved the dignity of his birth, even whilst pursuing an occupation which is considered to place a man beyond the pale of Society. “He’s as good a lodger as ever I had,” said Mrs. Battleby, on the occasion referred to, “as reglar as a clock, both in his ’abits and his payments--every Saturday mornin’ he dislocates my little bill, though I believe he’s sometimes sorely put-to to find the money, and every evenin’ he’s ’ome by eight o’clock and has his bit of supper and puts his light out by ten, but arter that--well! he’s a Mystery!” “Lor! Mrs. Battleby, ma’am, you don’t go to think he’s murdered anybody, do yer?” “_Murdered anybody!_” repeated the other, with withering contempt, “why, he’s the aimabeloust gentleman you ever come acrost. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, the Sig-nor” (Mrs. Battleby pronounced the word Signor, with a decided accentuation on the letter _g_), “not to save his own life! And got no temper in him. Never ’eard a ’arsh word, nor a hoath pass his lips. If you’d only seen him onst, you’d never arsk if he was a murderer, Mrs. Blamey!” “Then ’ow is he a Mystery, which it’s a word I never could abear.”