Each house seems to remind its neighbour, with all the complacence expressible in buff brick, that in this locality lodgings are _not_ to let.
For an hour after Peachey's departure, the silence of the house was unbroken.

Then a bedroom door opened, and a lady in a morning gown of the fashionable heliotrope came downstairs.

She had acute features; eyes which seemed to indicate the concentration of her thoughts upon a difficult problem, and cheeks of singular bloom.

Her name was Beatrice French; her years numbered six and twenty.
She entered the dining-room and drew up the blind.

Though the furniture was less than a year old, and by no means of the cheapest description, slovenly housekeeping had dulled the brightness of every surface.