clean and neatly curtained, and the polishable appurtenances of the door
gleamed to perfection. She admitted herself with a latch-key, and went straight
upstairs without encountering anyone.
    Descending again in a few moments, she entered the front room on the
ground-floor. This served both as parlour and dining-room; it was comfortably
furnished, without much attempt at adornment. On the walls were a few autotypes
and old engravings. A recess between fireplace and window was fitted with
shelves, which supported hundreds of volumes, the overflow of Yule's library.
The table was laid for a meal. It best suited the convenience of the family to
dine at five o'clock; a long evening, so necessary to most literary people, was
thus assured. Marian, as always when she had spent a day at the Museum, was
faint with weariness and hunger; she cut a small piece of bread from a loaf on
the table, and sat down in an easy chair.
    Presently appeared a short, slight woman of middle age, plainly dressed in
serviceable grey. Her face could never have been very comely, and it expressed
but moderate intelligence; its lines, however, were those of gentleness and good
feeling. She had the look of one who is making a painful effort to understand
something; this was fixed upon her features, and probably resulted from the
peculiar conditions of her life.
    »Rather early, aren't you, Marian?« she said, as she closed the door and
came forward to take a seat.
    »Yes; I have a little headache.«
    »Oh, dear! Is that beginning again?«
    Mrs Yule's speech was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not
flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as with
hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile such propriety
of phrase as she owed to years of association with educated people. In the same
degree did her bearing fall short of that which distinguishes a lady. The London
work-girl is rarely capable of raising herself, or being raised, to a place in
life above that to which she was born; she cannot learn how to stand and sit and
move like a woman bred to refinement, any more than she can fashion her tongue
to graceful speech. Mrs Yule's behaviour to Marian was marked with a singular
diffidence; she looked and spoke affectionately, but not with a mother's
freedom; one might have taken her for a trusted servant waiting upon her
mistress. Whenever opportunity offered, she watched the girl in