There stood on Campden Hill a large, dun-coloured house, enclosed by a walled-in garden of several acres in extent. It belonged to no particular order of architecture, and was more suggestive of comfort than of splendour, with its great windows, and rambling, nondescript proportions. On one side, built out from the house itself, was a big glass structure, originally designed for a conservatory. On the April morning of which I write, the whole place wore a dejected and dismantled appearance; while in the windows and on the outer wall of the garden were fixed black and white posters, announcing a sale of effects to take place on that day week.

The air of desolation which hung about the house had communicated itself in some vague manner to the garden, where the trees were bright with blossom, or misty with the tender green of the young leaves. Perhaps the effect of sadness was produced, or at least heightened, by the pathetic figure that paced slowly up and down the gravel path immediately before the house; the figure of a young woman, slight, not tall, bare-headed, and clothed in deep mourning.

She paused at last in her walk, and stood a moment in a listening attitude, her face uplifted to the sky.

Gertrude Lorimer was not a beautiful woman, and such good looks as she possessed varied from day to day, almost from hour to hour; but a certain air of character and distinction clung to her through all her varying moods, and redeemed her from a possible charge of plainness.

She had an arching, unfashionable forehead, like those of Lionardo da Vinci's women, short-sighted eyes, and an expressive month and chin. As she stood in the full light of the spring sunshine, her face pale and worn with recent sorrow, she looked, perhaps, older than her twenty-three years.

Pushing back from her forehead the hair, which, though not cut into a "fringe," had a tendency to stray about her face, and passing her hand across her eyes, with a movement expressive of mingled anxiety and resolve, she walked quickly to the door of the conservatory, opened it, and went inside.

The interior of the great glass structure would have presented a surprise to the stranger expectant of palms and orchids. It was fitted up as a photographer's studio.

Several cameras, each of a different size, stood about the room. In one corner was a great screen of white-painted canvas; there were blinds to the roof adapted for admitting or excluding the light; and paste-pots, bottles, printing-frames, photographs in various stages of finish—a nondescript heap of professional litter—were scattered about the place from end to end.

Standing among these properties was a young girl of about twenty years of age; fair, slight, upright as a dart, with a glance at once alert and serene.

The two young creatures in their black dresses advanced to each other, then stood a moment, clinging to one another in silence.

It was the first time that either had been in the studio since the day when their unforeseen calamity had overtaken them; a calamity which seemed to them so mysterious, so unnatural, so past all belief, and yet which was common-place enough—a sudden loss of fortune, immediately followed by the sudden death of the father, crushed by the cruel blow which had fallen on him.

"Lucy," said the elder girl at last, "is it only a fortnight ago?"

"I don't know," answered Lucy, looking round the room, whose familiar details stared at her with a hideous unfamiliarity; "I don't know if it is a hundred years or yesterday since I put that portrait of Phyllis in the printing-frame! Have you told Phyllis?"

"No, but I wish to do so at once; and Fanny. But here they come."

Two other black-gowned figures entered by the door which led from the house, and helped to form a sad little group in the middle of the room.

Frances Lorimer, the eldest of them all, and half-sister to the other three, was a stout, fair woman of thirty, presenting somewhat the appearance of a large and superannuated baby. She had a big face, with small, meaningless features, and faint, surprised-looking eyebrows. Her complexion had once been charmingly pink and white, but the tints had hardened, and a coarse red colour clung to the wide cheeks. At the present moment, her little, light eyes red with weeping, her eyebrows arched higher than ever, she looked the picture of impotent distress. She had come in, hand in hand with Phyllis, the youngest, tallest, and prettiest of the sisters; a slender, delicate-looking creature of seventeen, who had outgrown her strength; the spoiled child of the family by virtue of her youth, her weakness, and her personal charms.

Gertrude was the first to speak.

"Now that we are all together," she said, "it is a good opportunity for talking over our plans. There are a great many things to be considered, as you know. Phyllis, you had better not stand."

Phyllis cast her long, supple frame into the lounge which was regarded as her special property, and Fanny sat down on a chair, wiping her eyes with her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief. Gertrude put her hands behind her and leaned her head against the wall.

Phyllis's wide, grey eyes, with their half-wistful, half-humorous expression, glanced slowly from one to the other.

"Now that we are all grouped," she said, "there is nothing left but for Lucy to focus us."

It was a very small joke indeed, but they all laughed, even Fanny. No one had laughed for a fortnight, and at this reassertion of youth and health their spirits rose with unexpected rapidity.

"Now, Gertrude, unfold your plans," said Lucy, in her clear tones and with her air of calm resolve.

Gertrude played nervously with a copy of the British Journal of Photography which she held, and began to speak with hesitation, almost with apology, as one who deprecates any undue assumption of authority.

"You know that Mr. Grimshaw, our father's lawyer, was here last night," she said; "and that he and I had a long talk together about business. (He was sorry you were too ill to come down, Fanny.) He told me all about our affairs. We are quite, quite poor. When everything is settled, when the furniture is sold, he thinks there will be about £500 among us, perhaps more, perhaps less."

Fanny's thin, feminine tones broke in on her sister's words—

"There is my £50 a-year that my mama left me; I am sure you are all welcome to that."

"Yes, dear, yes," said Lucy, patting her shoulder; while Gertrude bit her lip and went on—

"We cannot live for long on £500, as you must know. We must work. People have been very kind. Uncle Sebastian has telegraphed for two of us to go out to India; Mrs. Devonshire offers another two of us a home for as long as we like. But I think we would all rather not accept these kind offers?"

"Of course not!" cried Lucy and Phyllis in chorus, while Fanny maintained a meek, consenting silence.

"The question remains," continued the speaker; "what can we do? There is teaching, of course. We might find places as governesses; but we should be at a great disadvantage without certificates or training of any sort. And we should be separated."

"Oh, Gertrude," cried Fanny, "you might write! You write so beautifully! I am sure you could make your fortune at it."

Gertrude's face flushed, but she controlled all other signs of the irritation which poor hapless Fan was so wont to excite in her.

"I have thought about that, Fanny," she said; "but I cannot afford to wait and hammer away at the publishers' doors with a crowd of people more experienced and better trained than myself. No, I have another plan to propose to you all. There is one thing, at least, that we can all do."

"We can all make photographs, except Fan," said Phyllis, in a doubtful voice.

"Exactly!" cried Gertrude, growing excited, and walking across to the middle of the room; "we can make photographs! We have had this studio, with every proper arrangement for light and other things, so that we are not mere amateurs. Why not turn to account the only thing we can do, and start as professional photographers? We should all keep together. It would be a risk, but if we failed we should be very little worse off than before. I know what Lucy thinks of it, already. What have you others to say to it?"

"Oh, Gertrude, need it come to that—to open a shop?" cried Fanny, aghast.

"Fanny, you are behind the age," said Lucy, hastily. "Don't you know that it is quite distinguished to keep a shop? That poets sell wall-papers, and first-class honour men sell lamps? That Girton students make bonnets, and are thought none the worse of for doing so?"

"I think it a perfectly splendid idea," cried Phyllis, sitting up; "we shall be like that good young man in Le Nabab."

"Indeed, I hope we shall not be like AndrÉ," said Gertrude, sitting down by Phyllis on the couch and putting her arm round her, "especially as none of us are likely to write successful tragedies by way of compensation."

"You two people are getting frivolous," remarked Lucy, severely, "and there are so many things to consider."

"First of all," answered Gertrude, "I want to convince Fanny. Think of all the dull little ways by which women, ladies, are generally reduced to earning their living! But a business—that is so different. It is progressive; a creature capable of growth; the very qualities in which women's work is dreadfully lacking."

"We have thought out a good many of the details," went on Lucy, who was possessed of less imagination than her sister, but had a clearer perception of what arguments would best appeal to Fanny's understanding. "It would not absorb all our capital, we have so many properties already. We thought of buying some nice little business, such as are advertised every week in The British Journal. But of course we should do nothing rashly, nor without consulting Mr. Grimshaw."

"Not for his advice," put in Gertrude, "but to arrange any transaction for us."

"Gertrude and I," went on Lucy, "would do the work, and you, Fanny, if you would, should be our housekeeper."

"And I," cried Phyllis, her great eyes shining, "I would walk up and down outside, like that man in the High Street, who tells me every day what a beautiful picture I should make!"

"Our photographs would be so good and our manners so charming that our fame would travel from one end of the earth to the other!" added Lucy, with a sudden abandonment of her grave and didactic manner.

"We would have afternoon tea in the studio on Sunday, to which everybody should flock; duchesses, cabinet ministers, and Mr. Irving. We should become the fashion, make colossal fortunes, and ultimately marry dukes!" finished off Gertrude.

Fanny looked up, helpless but unconvinced. The enthusiasm of these young creatures had failed to communicate itself to her. Their outburst of spirits at such a time seemed to her simply shocking.

As Lucy had said, Frances Lorimer was behind the age. She was an anachronism, belonging by rights to the period when young ladies played the harp, wore ringlets, and went into hysterics.

Living, moving, and having her being well within the vision of three pairs of searching and intensely modern young eyes, poor Fan could permit herself neither these nor any kindred indulgences; but went her way with a vague, inarticulate sense of injury—a round, sentimental peg in the square, scientific hole of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Now, when the little tumult had in some degree subsided, she ventured once more to address the meeting.

That was the worst of Fan; there was no standing up in fair fight and having it out with her; you might as soon fight a feather-bed. Convinced, to all appearances, one moment; the next, she would go back to the very point from which she had started, with that mild but terrible obstinacy of the weak.

"I suppose you know," she said, having once more recourse to the black-bordered pocket-handkerchief, "what every one will think?"

"Every one will be dead against it. We know that, of course," said Lucy, with the calm confidence of untried strength.

Fortunately the discussion was interrupted at this juncture, by the loud voice of the gong announcing luncheon.

Fanny rushed off to bathe her eyes. Gertrude ran upstairs to wash her hands, and the two younger girls lingered together a few moments in the studio.

"I wonder," said Phyllis, with the complete and unconscious cynicism of youth, "why Fan has never married; she has just the sort of qualities that men seem to think desirable in a wife and a mother!"

"Poor Fanny, don't you know?" answered Lucy. "There was a person once, ages ago, but he was poor and had to go away, and Fan would have no one else."

This was Lucy's version of that far away, uninteresting little romance; Fanny's "disappointment," to which the heroine of it was fond of making vaguely pathetic allusion. Fan would have no one else, her sister had said; but perhaps another cause lay at the root of her constancy (and of much feminine constancy besides); but if Lucy did not say no one else would have Fan, Phyllis, who was younger and more merciless, chose to accept the statement in its inverted form; which, by the by, neither she, nor I, nor you, reader, have authentic grounds for doing.

"Oh, I had heard about that before, naturally," she answered; but further conversation on the subject was cut short by the appearance of Fanny herself, come to summon them to the dining-room, where lunch was set out on the great table.

Old Kettle, the butler, waited on them as usual, and there was nothing in the nature of the viands to bring home to them the fact of their altered circumstances; but it was a dismal meal, crowned with a sorrow's crown of sorrow, the remembrance of happier things. In the vacant place they all seemed to see the dead father, as he had been wont to sit among them; charming, gay, debonnair, the life of the party; delighting no less in the light-hearted sallies of his daughters, than in his own neatly-polished epigrams; a man as brilliant as he had been unsatisfactory; as little able to cope with the hard facts of existence as he had been reckless in attacking them.

"Oh, girls," said Fanny, when the door had finally closed upon Kettle; "Oh, girls, I have been thinking. If only circumstances had been otherwise, if only—things had happened a little differently, I might have had a home to offer you, a home to which you might all have come!"

Overcome by this vision of possibilities, this resuscitation of her dead and buried might-have-been, Miss Lorimer began to sob quietly; and the poor eyes, which she had been at such pains to bathe, overflowed, deluging the streaky expanses of newly-washed cheeks.

"Oh, I can't help it, I can't help it," moaned this shuttlecock of fate, appealing to the stern young judges who sat silent around her; an appeal which, if duly considered, will seem to be even more piteous than the outbreak of emotion of which it was the cause.

Gertrude got up from her chair and went from the room; Phyllis sat staring, with beautiful, unmoved, accustomed eyes; only Lucy, laying a cool hand on her half-sister's burning fingers, spoke words of comfort and of common sense.