“The clock of Kylmington church, which was as much behind any other public timekeeper I had ever encountered as the town of Kylmington was behind any other town I had ever explored, struck eight as I opened the little wooden gate of the churchyard, and went into the shade of an avenue of stunted sycamores, which was supposed to be the chief glory of Kylmington.

“It was twenty minutes past eight by London time, and the summer sun had gone down, leaving all the low western sky bathed in vivid yellow light, which deepened into crimson as I watched it.

“I had been more than an hour and a half in Kylmington. I had taken some slight refreshment at the principal hotel — a queer, old-fashioned place, with a ruinous, weedy appearance pervading it, and the impress of incurable melancholy stamped on the face of every scrap of rickety furniture and lopsided window-blind. I had taken some slight refreshment — to this hour I don’t know what it was I ate upon that balmy summer evening, so entirely was my mind absorbed by that bright hope, which was growing brighter and brighter every moment. I had been to the stationer’s shop, which still bore above its window the faded letters of the name ‘Jakins,’ though the last of the Jakinses had long left Kylmington. I had been to this shop, and from a good-natured but pensive matron I had heard tidings that made my bright hope a still brighter certainty.

“I began business by asking if there was any lady in Kylmington who gave lessons in music and singing.

“‘Yes,’ Mr. Jakins’s successor told me, ‘there were two music-mistresses in the town — one was Madame Carinda, who taught at Grove House, the fashionable ladies’ school; the other was Miss Wilson, whose terms were lower than Madame Carinda’s — though Madame wasn’t a bit a foreigner except by name — and who was much respected in the town. Likewise her papa, which had been quite the gentleman, attending church twice every Sunday as regular as the day came round, and being quite a picture of respectability, with his venerable pious-looking grey hair.’

“I gave a little start as I heard this.

“‘Miss Wilson lived with her papa, did she?’ I asked.

“‘Yes,’ the woman told me; ‘Miss Wilson had lived with her papa till the poor old gentleman’s death.’

“‘Oh, he was dead, then?’

“‘Yes, Mr. Wilson had died in the previous December, of a kind of decline, fading away like, almost unbeknown; and being, oh, so faithfully nursed and cared for by that blessed daughter of his. And people did say that he had once been very wealthy, and had lost his money in some speculation; and the loss of it had preyed upon his mind, and he had fallen into a settled melancholy like, and was never seen to smile.’

“The woman opened a drawer as she talked to me, and, after turning over some papers, took out a card — a card with embossed edges, fly-spotted, and dusty, and with a little faded blue ribbon attached to it — a card on which there was written, in the hand I knew so well, an announcement that Miss Wilson, of the Hermitage, would give instruction in music and singing for a guinea a quarter.

“I had been about to ask for a description of the young music-mistress, but I had no need to do so now.

“‘Miss Wilson is the young lady I wish to see,’ I said. ‘Will you direct me to the Hermitage? I will call there early to-morrow morning.’

“The proprietress of Jakins’s, who was, I dare say, something of a matchmaker, after the manner of all good-natured matrons, smiled significantly.

“‘I know where you could see Miss Wilson, nearer than the Hermitage,’ she said, ‘and sooner than to-morrow morning. She works very hard all day — poor, dear, delicate-looking young thing; but every evening when it’s tolerably fine, she goes to the churchyard. It’s the only walk I’ve ever seen her take since her father’s death. She goes past my window regular every night, just about when I’m shutting up, and from my door I can see her open the gate and go into the churchyard. It’s a doleful walk to take alone at that time of the evening, to be sure, though some folks think it’s the pleasantest walk in all Kylmington.’

&ld............