“Oh, thank you!” said Ralph rapturously; “how awfully good of you. Father took me once to hear him at Southampton, he was playing in ‘The Bells’ one Saturday afternoon. It was splendid; there was the dream you know, you saw it all before you. He dreamt of the court of justice, and all the time it was his own conscience that was killing him, and his remorse for having murdered the traveller in the sleigh. I thought I should have choked at the end when he believed they were hanging him; he just says, you know, in a sort of gasp, ‘Take the rope off my neck!’ and then he falls back dead, and the play ends. It felt so jolly to get out of the dark theatre into the street, and to find the sun shining, and everything as jolly as usual, and to know that all that dreadful misery wasn’t really true.” “Not true?” said Sir Matthew reflectively. “H’m!” He looked with a sort of envy at the boy’s clear innocent eyes, then he turned away; whether he were absorbed in his own thoughts or in the observation of the dingy crowd, it would have been hard to say. They paused at a house in Bow Street where he had to make some inquiry, and Ralph fell into a happy dream about his latest hero the great actor, returning with a pang to the uncomfortable present when the hansom at length drew up at a house in Queen Anne’s Gate. Feeling very small and desolate he followed his guardian up the broad steps and into the imposing entrance hall. “Wipe your shoes,” said Sir Matthew, in his brisk authoritative tone. Ralph obediently complied, and saw somewhat to his amusement that the same command was printed in large black letters on the mat. “When I have a house of my own,” he reflected, “there shall be a doormat with SALVE on it. Then the chaps will know I’m awfully glad to see them, and that I’m not thinking first of my carpets.” Sir Matthew, meantime, had been talking to a greyheaded butler; Ralph only caught the closing remark: “And let someone show Master Denmead up to the school-room.” The butler looked at the small lonely boy in his black suit. “Fraulein and Miss Evereld are out, sir,” he replied unwilling to send this sad-faced little lad into the utter solitude of the upper regions. “Oh, very well, then you had better come with me, Ralph,” said Sir Matthew, and he led the way upstairs. The boy glanced nervously round as they entered. This was not one of the homelike, comfortable, used drawing-rooms such as he had grown to love at Westbrook Hall, but a great saloon upholstered in the best style of a well-known firm, and as lacking in soul and individuality as a Parisian doll. There were several people present. Lady Mactavish a peevish-looking woman with small suspicious blue eyes and a nervous manner, shook hands with him and looked him over in a dissatisfied way as though mentally reflecting what in the world she was to do with him. “Janet,” she called turning to her elder daughter, “this is poor Mr. Denmead’s son.”