at the entrance. De Crespigny Park, a thoroughfare connecting Grove
Lane, Camberwell, with Denmark Hill, presents a double row of
similar dwellings; its clean breadth, with foliage of trees and
shrubs in front gardens, makes it pleasant to the eye that finds
pleasure in suburban London. In point of respectability, it has
claims only to be appreciated by the ambitious middle-class of
Camberwell. Each house seems to remind its neighbour, with all the
complacence expressible in buff brick, that in this locality
lodgings are _not_ to let.

For an hour after Peachey's departure, the silence of the house was
unbroken. Then a bedroom door opened, and a lady in a morning gown
of the fashionable heliotrope came downstairs. She had acute
features; eyes which seemed to indicate the concentration of her
thoughts upon a difficult problem, and cheeks of singular bloom. Her
name was Beatrice French; her years numbered six and twenty.

She entered the dining-room and drew up the blind. Though the
furniture was less than a year old, and by no means of the cheapest
description, slovenly housekeeping had dulled the brightness of
every surface. On a chair lay a broken toy, one of those elaborate
and costly playthings which serve no purpose but to stunt a child's
imagination. Though the time was midsummer, not a flower appeared
among the pretentious ornaments. The pictures were a strange medley
--autotypes of some artistic value hanging side by side with
hideous oleographs framed in ponderous gilding. Miss. then violently
rang the bell. When the summons had been twice French looked about
her with an expression of strong disgust, repeated, there appeared a
young woman whose features told of long and placid slumbers.