“Signor Ricardo, Prof. of the Italian Language!” That was the legend that was engraved on the small brass plate that surmounted the bell that admitted visitors to Mrs. Battleby’s lodging-house in Soho. Signor Ricardo was everything that was estimable in Mrs. Battleby’s eyes, only he was, as she observed to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Blamey, “a Mystery”. He was a tall, attenuated man, who stooped slightly in the shoulders--had dark-grey eyes, keen as those of a hawk, and shaded by bushy eyebrows--a perfect aquiline nose--and a grave, almost solemn mouth, which seldom smiled, and ended in a pointed beard, like that of Vandyke. He was very poor, being an Italian refugee, whose estates had be…
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