his eyes gleamed with life; answering a remark addressed to him by a
neighbour on the car, he spoke jovially.

No rain was falling, but the streets shone wet and muddy under lurid
lamp-lights. Just above the house-tops appeared the full moon, a
reddish disk, blurred athwart floating vapour. The car drove
northward, speedily passing from the region of main streets and
great edifices into a squalid district of factories and workshops
and crowded by-ways. At Aston Church the young man alighted, and
walked rapidly for five minutes, till he reached a row of small
modern houses. Socially they represented a step or two upwards in
the gradation which, at Birmingham, begins with the numbered court
and culminates in the mansions of Edgbaston.

He knocked at a door, and was answered by a girl, who nodded
recognition.

"Mrs. Hilliard in? Just tell her I'm here."

There was a natural abruptness in his voice, but it had a kindly
note, and a pleasant smile accompanied it. After a brief delay he
received permission to go upstairs, where the door of a sitting-room
stood open. Within was a young woman, slight, pale, and pretty, who
showed something of embarrassment, though her face made him welcome.

"I expected you sooner."

"Business kept me back. Well, little girl?"

The table was spread for tea, and at one end of it, on a high chair,