Of Jane he only said that she had hitherto lived with the Hewetts' landlady, and was now going to be removed by her grandfather, having just got through an illness.

Dire visions of infection at once assailed Mrs.Byass; impossible to admit under the same roof with her baby a person who had just been ill.

This scruple was, however, overcome; the two rooms at the top of the house--unfurnished--had been long vacant, owing to fastidiousness in Mr.and Mrs.Byass, since their last lodger, after a fortnight of continuous drunkenness, broke the windows, ripped the paper off the walls, and ended by trying to set fire to the house.

Sidney was intrusted with an outline treaty, to be communicated to Mr.Snowdon.
This discussion was just concluded when Mr.Samuel Byass presented himself--a slender, large-headed young man, with very light hair cropped close upon the scalp, and a foolish face screwed into an expression of facetiousness.

He was employed in some clerkly capacity at a wholesale stationer's in City Road.