The night was hot, and the windows of the
staircase were all wide open. Coming to the top, it gave him a
passing chill of surprise (there being no rooms but his up there)
to find a stranger sitting on the window-sill, more after the
manner of a venturesome glazier than an amateur ordinarily careful
of his neck; in fact, so much more outside the window than inside,
as to suggest the thought that he must have come up by the water-
spout instead of the stairs.
The stranger said nothing until Neville put his key in his door;
then, seeming to make sure of his identity from the action, he
spoke:
'I beg your pardon,' he said, coming from the window with a frank
and smiling air, and a prepossessing address; 'the beans.'
Neville was quite at a loss.
'Runners,' said the visitor. 'Scarlet. Next door at the back.'
'O,' returned Neville. 'And the mignonette and wall-flower?'
'The same,' said the visitor.
'Pray walk in.'
'Thank you.'
Neville lighted his candles, and the visitor sat down. A handsome
gentleman, with a young face, but with an older figure in its
robustness and its breadth of shoulder; say a man of eight-and-
twenty, or at the utmost thirty; so extremely sunburnt that the
contrast between his brown visage and the white forehead shaded out
of doors by his hat, and the glimpses of white throat below the
neckerchief, would have been almost ludicrous but for his broad
temples, bright blue eyes, clustering brown hair, and laughing
teeth.
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