Birmingham, where an hour or two of talk under shelter might make
Eve's journey hither worth while. As Hilliard lived at the north end
of the town, he suggested Aston Hall as a possible rendezvous, and
here they met, early one Saturday afternoon in December.

From the eminence which late years have encompassed with a
proletarian suburb, its once noble domain narrowed to the bare acres
of a stinted breathing ground, Aston Hall looks forth upon joyless
streets and fuming chimneys, a wide welter of squalid strife. Its
walls, which bear the dints of Roundhead cannonade, are blackened
with ever-driving smoke; its crumbling gateway, opening aforetime
upon a stately avenue of chestnuts, shakes as the steam-tram rushes
by. Hilliard's imagination was both attracted and repelled by this
relic of what he deemed a better age. He enjoyed the antique
chambers, the winding staircases, the lordly gallery, with its dark
old portraits and vast fireplaces, the dim-lighted nooks where one
could hide alone and dream away the present; but in the end, reality
threw scorn upon such pleasure. Aston Hall was a mere architectural
relic, incongruous and meaning. less amid its surroundings; the
pathos of its desecrated dignity made him wish that it might be
destroyed, and its place fittingly occupied by some People's Palace,
brand new, aglare with electric light, ringing to the latest
melodies of the street. When he had long gazed at its gloomy front,
the old champion of royalism seemed to shrink together, humiliated
by Time's insults.

It was raining when he met Eve at the entrance.

"This won't do," were his first words. "You can't come over in such
weather as this. If it hadn't seemed to be clearing tip an hour or