In her days of prosperity Lady Constantine had often gone to the city of Bath, either frivolously¹, for shopping purposes, or musico-religiously, to attend choir² festivals in the abbey; so there was nothing surprising in her reverting³ to an old practice. That the journey might appear to be of a somewhat similar nature she took with her the servant who had been accustomed to accompany her on former occasions, though the woman, having now left her service, and settled in the village as the wife of Anthony Green, with a young child on her hands, could with some difficulty leave home. Lady Constantine overcame the anxious mother’s scruples⁴ by providing that young Green should be well cared for; and knowing that she could count upon this woman’s fidelity⁵, if upon anybody’s, in case of an accident (for it was chiefly Lady Constantine’s exertions⁶ that had made an honest wife of Mrs. Green), she departed for a fortnight’s absence.

The next day found mistress and maid settled in lodgings⁷ in an old plum-coloured brick street, which a hundred years ago could boast of rank and fashion among its residents, though now the broad fan-light over each broad door admitted the sun to the halls of a lodging-house keeper only. The lamp-posts were still those that had done duty with oil lights; and rheumatic old coachmen and postilions, that once had driven and ridden gloriously from London to Land’s End, ornamented⁸ with their bent⁹ persons and bow legs the pavement in front of the chief inn, in the sorry hope of earning sixpence to keep body and soul together.

‘We are kept well informed on the time o’ day, my lady,’ said Mrs. Green, as she pulled down the blinds in Lady Constantine’s room on the evening of their arrival. ‘There’s a church exactly at the back of us, and I hear every hour strike.’

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