The doctor’s two vehicles, together with the horses, had been sold, but his widow had purchased a neat unostentatious-looking brougham for her own use. She had been so long accustomed to a carriage that from force of habit she felt constrained to have one.
She had taken with her into her lodgings in Somerset-street her maid Amy, who was a faithful girl and devotedly attached to her mistress. The brougham was ordered, and as the doctor’s widow did not care to wait upon a stranger without a companion, she took Amy with her.
Peace’s house in the Evelina-road was a decent, respectable-looking habitation enough, but in its external appearance it certainly could not be described as aristocratic-looking. Its general appearance is doubtless familiar to many of my readers from the representations of it which have appeared in several of the illustrated papers at the time of Peace’s arrest for the attempted murder of police-constable Robinson.
Anyway, it was a far better sort of habitation than Mrs. Bourne had expected to see, for she was under the impression that Rawton’s friends must be of the very lowest class.
Mrs. Thompson opened the door, and to Mrs. Bourne’s inquiry as to whether Mr. Thompson was within, she was answered in the affirmative.
She was shown into an elegantly furnished parlour, and saw there an old gentleman looking over a draft which he had before him, stretched out on the table.
Upon the widow’s entrance he looked up from the chart or draft, and made a sort of bow, which the widow returned.
“Pardon my intruding upon you, sir,” said Mrs. Bourne. “You are Mr. Thompson, I presume.”
“Yes, madam,” said Peace, “Pray be seated.”
“You are a friend of Mr. Rawton’s, I believe.”