It was very lonely.

Willie Denner, of course, had long ago gone to bed, and unless the lawyer chose to go into the kitchen for company, where Mary was reading her one work of fiction.

"The Accounts of the Death Beds of Eminent Saints," he had no one to speak to.

Many a time before had he sat thus, pondering on the solitude of his life, and contrasting his house with other Ashurst homes.

He glanced about his cold bare room, and thought of the parlor of the Misses Woodhouse.