“I recollect perfectly well when the baron died a few months ago. There was a suspicion of his having been poisoned; and now to think of the whole family being destroyed in that way!—and by one young girl to whom they had been so very kind, too! What a young devil she must be!” said one.
“Oh, she comes from India, it appears. And India is the native land of devils, as we have good reason to know since the revolt of the Sepoys,” said another.
“Well, it is a good thing that the unnatural young monster is in custody. If she isn’t hung the gallows might as well be put down altogether; but she is safe to be, for this beats Palmer all hollow.”
Malcolm heard no more. With a sinking heart he hurried out into the air, and took his way down the street, and began to tread the narrow lanes and alleys of the neighborhood in search of such lodgings as he desired for Eudora. At length, about half way down, between the two crossings of a narrow street, he paused before a small green-grocer’s shop bearing the name of Mrs. Corder, over which a bill in an upper window announced “Apartments.” He entered the shop, and behind the counter found the proprietress, a fat, middle-aged, motherly-looking widow, with a large number of children, who were continually toddling in and out between the little dark back parlor and the front shop.
Stepping up to the counter, he asked the woman to show him the apartments she had to let.
“Here, Charley,” said Mrs. Corder, calling her eldest hope, a red-haired lad of about ten years old, “to take her place while she showed the gentleman the rooms above.”
“The lodgers have a private entrance, sir,” she said, leading the way out of the shop to a street door on its right hand, which admitted them into a narrow passage, from which an equally narrow staircase led to the second floor.
Mr. Montrose followed the landlady up-stairs to a pair of small, plainly furnished, but clean rooms, connected by folding doors. The front one was a parlor, the back one a chamber.
“What are your terms?” inquired Mr. Montrose, when he had glanced approvingly around these rooms.
“Twenty-five shillings a week, sir, with attendance,” replied Mrs. Corder.