A change from the orderly domesticities of his sister's house had become necessary to him, and he looked forward with satisfaction to the evening he had planned.
At a turn of the road, which, as he well remembered, had been a frequent limit of his nurse-guarded walk five-and-twenty years ago, his eye fell upon a garden gate marked with the white inscription, "Pear-tree Cottage." It brought him to a pause.

This must be Mrs.
Wade's dwelling; the intellectual lady had quite slipped out of his thoughts, and with amusement he stopped to examine the cottage as well as dusk permitted.

The front was overgrown with some creeper; the low roof made an irregular line against the sky one window on the ground-floor showed light through a red blind.

Mrs.Wade, he had learnt, enjoyed but a small income; the interior was probably very modest.

There she sat behind the red blind and meditated on the servitude of her sex.