"Oh dear, you are a horrible tease! There, let me go; I promise not to run away."
"Very well. Now don't stir."
The Duke of Long Acre and Marion Durrant, his sweetheart, were seated in one of the smallest conservatories in London. This conservatory was situated at the back of Miss Traynor's house in Knightsbridge. The house and all that it contained, with the exception of Marion's aunt, the owner, were small. Two people could not possibly walk abreast in the hall, nor up the stairs. It was a saying of the Duke's that one of those days he should get wedged in that hall, and would have to be extracted from it by violent means. There was a tiny front drawing-room and a tiny back drawing-room, and between them a pair of folding-doors which always stood open. At the rear of the back drawing-room was the little conservatory in which Marion and the Duke were seated. The conservatory was as wide as the room, and three feet deep. Owing to shelves at the ends and sides for flowerpots, the absolute dimensions of the place were much reduced, and it was impossible for two people to sit at the same side; so when the Duke held Marion he was standing beside her. He had risen from his chair opposite her a few minutes before. The conservatory was separated from the back drawing-room by a glass door opening into the room. At the back of the conservatory was a glass door yielding outwards on a little wooden landing, which, by means of a flight of wooden steps, communicated with the very small garden below.
Now, this being one of the fairest days of June, the door opening outwards on the landing and the door opening inwards on the back drawing-room were open. It was one of those days which make the old young, the young poetical, and love the sweetest pastime for those who have anyone to love. The day was in the fresh warm youth of the year; all the asperities of winter and spring had passed away, and the time had not yet been fatigued with summer heats; the air was moist and full of the scent of young leaves. In the dustiest street of all London there was some faint suggestion of the forest. According to the calendar it was summer; but really it was the summer end of spring, when the land is heaviest with leaves and the air is thickest with the songs of birds. There is a savour of resin in the breeze which made those who had been country-born, and were now penned in the city, raise in unguarded moments their heads, and listen for the murmur of the brittle pine-leaves.
"With your kind permission, or rather, having plainly shown you that I do not want your permission, kind or otherwise, I will now read to you the fifty-second chapter:
"'His tall thin form had shrunken almost to a skeleton. Privation and sorrow had at length broken down his health and spirits. Although he had scarcely reached his fiftieth year, he was already an old man. His eyes were dim; his cheeks had fallen in; his hands were emaciated and tremulous, his eyes were deep-sunken and unnaturally bright.
"'All the clothes he possessed were on him, with the exception of one shirt, a pair of socks, and three or four dilapidated collars. His elbows were through his coat; his trousers were frayed at the edges; the uppers and soles of his boots had, in more than one place, parted company.
"'He lived in a back attic off Cursitor Street, near Chancery Lane. There he had contracted to pay four shillings a week for an unfurnished room. One part of the contract had been fulfilled, for it might almost be said with literal truth that the room was unfurnished. It contained one chair, which had been cane-seated once, but which was now a skeleton. Across the framework of this seat had been placed a board. On this board were now set a cup and saucer and small black crockeryware teapot, a knife and fork, and a common delf plate. These, with the exception of a tin candlestick and a battered old quart tin kettle, were all the articles connected with the kitchen or table which could be seen in the place. In a corner farthest from the skylight lay a wretched stretcher, and by the side of the stretcher a common soap-box, which served as a seat, while the board across the chair answered as a table. Under the broken pane in the skylight stood a basin, and on the chimney-piece were a piece of soap, a worn-out comb and brush, a towel, and two small jugs.
"'Beyond the things mentioned above there was absolutely nothing in the room, except the most wretched of all things--Antony Belmore himself. He was sitting on the box at the head of his miserable stretcher, when a knock came to the door.
"'"Come in," said Belmore. Only two people ever called on him now--his landlord and his friend Valentine de Montmorency.