“Well! it’s this way. When the Sig-nor come to me, now three years ago, he hired three rooms at the top of the ’ouse. I had better rooms I could have let him ’ave, on the floor below, but no! nothing would suit him but my top rooms, hattics as I call ’em, and I had to turn Mary Ann--that gal as went off with the postman--out of her bedroom in order to accommodate him, and he’s lived there ever since. One is his bedroom and the other his parlour, as you may suppose, but would you believe it, Mrs. Blamey, as I’ve never seen the inside of my own third room, ever since the Sig-nor has been with me!” “My! what do he do with it?” “’Ow can I tell? I tell you he’s a Mystery! The first day I went up to clean his floor, I found the door locked, and when I arsked for the key, the Sig-nor he says to me, ‘Excuge me,’ he says, for he’s the politest of gentlemen, ‘but I will see after that room myself.’ ‘Lor! Sir,’ I says, ‘but if it’s books or papers, I’ll be as careful as careful,’ I says, ‘but you can’t never struggle with the dust yourself.’ But he was as firm as a rock, and that there door has never been unclosed to my knowledge since.” “Mrs. Battleby, ma’am, you gives me the cold creeps all down my back! Suppose he should be Jack the Ripper, and congeals the corpusses in your third room. Stranger things ’ave ’appened before now! I think it be’oves you as an ’ouseholder to break open the door!” At this suggestion, Mrs. Battleby looked for a moment confounded, but in a short time her confidence in the respectability of her lodger, not to say the remembrance of his regularity in paying his rent, restored her equanimity. “No! Mrs. Blamey, no!” she replied, “wild ’orses shouldn’t make me do it! I’ll never believe no bad of the Sig-nor, though he _is_ a foreigner, and many’s the one as has warned me against him. And he has the respectablelest of friends. Doctor Steinberg is here five days out of the seven, and I’ve heard tell as the Sig-nor teaches Royalty to speak the I-talian langwidge. In course he is a foreigner, there’s no denying that, but it ain’t ’is fault, and I’d be the last to throw it in his teeth! But lor! here’s the Doctor coming along as usual, and he and the Sig-nor will be closeted for hours together.” The conversation was here interrupted by the arrival of a young man of about thirty, who had fair hair, worn longer than is usual in this country, and whose short-sighted eyes appeared abnormally large through the powerful glasses he was compelled to wear. He was a German of the name of Steinberg, and the profession of medicine--a clever fellow who was rising fast, and knew how to make the best of his opportunities. He was interested in Signor Ricardo for several reasons, and was, as Mrs. Battleby had said, a frequent visitor there. “Is the Signor in?” he demanded, as he came up with her. “Yes, Sir! he came in half an hour ago. You might be sure of that! He is so regular that I calls him my clock.” “And alone?” continued Steinberg.