It was a queer old house in Bloomsbury, that had been fashionable some two hundred years ago, and had fallen into abject neglect. The hall door was dim for want of paint, and weatherbeaten to a dirty gray; the lower windows were tawdry with vulgar blinds and curtains, and enlivened with green boxes full of a few pining flowers. The drawing-room windows showed a sort of mildewed finery, and then, in melancholy degrees, poverty claimed the upper stories. It had all the features and cast of a London lodging house. Within, the house carried out the same suggestion of past grandeur and present decay. The hall was wide, dingy, and unfurnished; the staircase of oak was impressive, stained, and dus…
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