"No," was the reply, so my artful question, failed in its effect. Then the conversation languished, and Miss Destiny babbled to excuse her lack of hospitality. Lucinda had left the room. "I should give you a cup of tea, Gertrude, and you also, Mr. Vance. But the kettle is not boiling, and the baker has not come, so you must excuse me." "I am not hungry, thank you, Miss Destiny. What a comfortable little place you have here." In my desperate desire to propitiate the little woman, I told a lie, and Miss Monk saw that I did, for her lip curled, so contemptuously, that the color came to my cheeks. I had been undiplomatic, for the word I had used did not apply in the least to the bare surroundings. The shed--it had originally been a shed, as I afterwards learned--was divided by frail partitions into four small rooms: two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a parlor. These were furnished with the flotsam and jetsam of auction rooms, in an insufficient manner. If Miss Destiny had contracted the vice of avarice from the late Gabriel Monk, she had done so very thoroughly. The bare wooden walls, the drugget on the floor, the four or five sticks of shaky furniture, and the evil-smelling oil stove, made up a picture of insistent penury. And Miss Destiny, lean-faced, keen-eyed and restless, looked like the hag Poverty herself, as she hovered about the bleak room. And even she saw through my lying remark. "Comfortable, no indeed, Mr. Vance," she tittered nervously, "comfort, to my mind, means laziness and self-indulgence. Lucinda and I live the simple life, and require only the bare necessities of civilization. And I'm so poor----" Her niece intervened coldly. "Is it necessary to inform Mr. Vance of your private business, aunt?" "Oh, my dear, he knows it. For instance, that I am your aunt only by courtesy." "What do you mean? You are my mother's sister." "Yes. Poor dear Jane; what a bad marriage she made with that spendthrift." "Aunt! aunt! Leave my father alone." "My dear, I refuse to be contradicted. I never liked Walter, and I never will, so I disassociate myself from him in every way, as a sister-in-law, and look upon myself as your aunt by courtesy: merely by courtesy." Miss Monk rose with a flush. "This conversation cannot be interesting to Mr. Vance," she said, quietly. "If you have any business with him, I shall leave you together." "No, no, I have no business with him, my dear. Merely I should like to know if Anne's will really leaves all her property to Joseph." "If you mean Mr. Striver, I understand that he had got the money and the lease of the corner shop to say nothing of the contents," said I, in detail.