Cyril and Wilderspin had returned to the Continent.  D’Arcy was still away.

I made application to the Home Secretary to have the pauper grave opened.  On the ground that I was ‘not a relative of the deceased,’ the officials refused to institute even preliminary inquiries.

During this time no news of Mrs. Gudgeon had come to me through Polly Onion, and I determined to go to Primrose Court and see what had become of her.

When I reached Primrose Court I found that the shutters of the house were up.  Knocking and getting no response, I ascertained from a pot-boy who was passing the corner of the court that Mrs. Gudgeon had decamped.  Neither the pot-boy nor any one in the court could tell me whither she was gone.

‘But where is Polly Onion?’ I asked anxiously; for I was beginning to blame myself bitterly for having neglected them.

‘I can tell you where poor Polly is,’ said the pot-boy.  ’She’s in the New North Cemetery.  She fell downstairs and broke her neck.’

‘Why, she lived downstairs,’ I said.

’That’s true; you seem to be well up in the family, sir.  But Poll couldn’t pay her rent, so old Meg took her in.  And on the very morning when Meg and Poll were a-startin’ off together into the country—­it was quite early and dark—­Poll stumbles over three young flower-gals as ‘ad crep’ in the front door in the night time and was makin’ the stairs their bed.  Gals as hadn’t made enough to pay for their night’s lodgin’ often used to sleep on Meg’s stairs.  Poll was picked up as nigh dead as a toucher, and she died at the ‘ospital.’

Toiling in the revolving cage of Circumstance, I strove in vain against that most appalling form of envy—­the envy of one’s fellow creatures that they should live and breathe while there is no breath of life for the one.

My uncle Cecil’s death had made me a rich man; but what was wealth to me if it could not buy me respite from the vision haunting me day and night—­the vision of the attic, the mattress, and the woman?

And as I thought of the powerlessness of wealth to give me one crumb of comfort, and remembered Winnie’s sermon about wealth, I would look at myself in the mirror above my mantelpiece and smile bitterly at the sight of the hollow cheeks, furrowed brow, and melancholy eyes, and recall her words about her hovering near me after she was dead.

The thought of my wealth and the squalor in which she had died was, I think, the most maddening thought of all.  I had now become the possessor of Wilderspin’s picture ‘Faith and Love,’ having bought it of the Bond Street dealer to whom it belonged; and also of the ‘Christabel’ picture, and these I was constantly looking at as they hung up on the walls of my room.  After a while, however, I destroyed the ‘Christabel’ picture, it was too painful.  Though I would not see such friends as I had, I read their letters; indeed, it was these same letters which alone could draw from me a grim smile now and then.