‘Good-night!’ Laurie said, opening the door for her; and then he stood about in the room helplessly, as men stand when they object to join the other visitors; and finally went back to his chair by the vacant fire. ‘He is waiting for the child,’ Miss Hadley said to herself as she went down-stairs; and the thought was in her mind all the way home to her little rooms in one of the streets adjoining Fitzroy Square, where she lived with her old sister, who was an invalid. They had a parlour and two bed-rooms, and bought their own ‘things,’ and were attended and otherwise ‘done for’ by their landlady; and, on the whole, were very comfortable, though all the noises of the little street, and echoes from the bigger streets at hand, went on under their windows, and the geraniums in their little balcony were coated with ‘blacks,’ and the dinginess of the surroundings, out and in, were unspeakable. People live so in the environs of Fitzroy Square, and are very lively, pleasant sort of people; and think very well of themselves all the same. Laurie was not waiting for the child; he was waiting to catch the padrona’s eye and say good-night to her; but that inconsistent woman was now all brightness and eager attention to the travel-talk which Miss Hadley hated. The people who had just come from Dresden were a young painter and his wife, and there were so many things and places and people to be talked of between them. ‘You saw old Hermann,’ the padrona said, with a smile and a tear. ‘Ah, he used to be so kind to,--us;--and the big Baron with all his orders, and Madame Kurznacht? Did they ever speak of us?--and hasn’t old Hermann a lovely old head? Did you paint him? Ah! it is so strange.--it is like a dream to think of the old times!’ Could any man, though jealous, and sulky, and neglected, interrupt this to say a gruff good-night? Not Laurie, at least. He thought to himself that letting alone sometimes went too far, and that he, too, might have had a word addressed to him now and then; but still it went to his heart to hear her recollections and the tone in her voice. She was thinking, not of these new people and their travels, but of poor Severn, and the days when he and she had wandered over the world together. She was better off now. Laurie believed that there was no doubt she was better off, and less harassed with care and bowed down with anxiety; but yet,--poor Severn! And two painter-folk straying about the world, free to go anywhere, the man emancipating the woman by his society,--is not that better than one alone? And how could her friend, with a heart in him, stop her in her tender thoughts by thrusting himself into the midst of them? While Laurie, sulky but Christian, was thus cogitating, Alice came into the room, and came softly up to him. ‘Are you here all by yourself, Mr. Renton?’ she said. ‘Yes, Alice, all alone. Sit down and talk to me,’ said Laurie.