her professed disregard for the gathering tumult of popular
enthusiasm. She had not left home to-day, and the brilliant weather
did not tempt her forth. On the table lay a new volume from the
circulating library,--something about Evolution--but she had no
mind to read it; it would have made her too conscious of the
insincerity with which she approached such profound subjects. For a
quarter of an hour and more she had stood at the window, regarding a
prospect, now as always, utterly wearisome and depressing to her.

Grove Lane is a long acclivity, which starts from Camberwell
suburban dwellings. The houses vary considerably in size and Green,
and, after passing a few mean shops, becomes a road of aspect, also
in date,--with the result of a certain picturesqueness, enhanced
by the growth of fine trees on either side. Architectural grace can
nowhere be discovered, but the contract-builder of today has not yet
been permitted to work his will; age and irregularity, even though
the edifices be but so many illustrations of the ungainly, the
insipid, and the frankly hideous, have a pleasanter effect than that
of new streets built to one pattern by the mile. There are small
cottages overgrown with creepers, relics of Camberwell's rusticity;
rows of tall and of squat dwellings that lie behind grassy plots,
railed from the road; larger houses that stand in their own gardens,
hidden by walls. Narrow passages connect the Lane with its more
formal neighbour Camberwell Grove; on the other side are ways
leading towards Denmark Hill, quiet, leafy. From the top of the
Lane, where Champion Hill enjoys an aristocratic seclusion, is
obtainable a glimpse of open fields and of a wooded horizon
southward.

It is a neighbourhood in decay, a bit of London which does not keep