anner escaped them;
and so infectious was this interest that some who had never seen him at
all were misled by their excitement into narrating how he had stopped
them in the street to ask the way to the architect's lodgings, and how
he had made so many striking and authentic remarks that it was wonderful
that he had ever reached Bellevue Lodge at all that night. Clerk
Janaway, who was sorely chagrined to think that he should have missed an
opportunity of distinguished converse, declared that he had felt the
stranger's grey eyes go through and through him like a knife, and had
only made believe to stop him entering the choir, in order to convince
himself by the other's masterful insistence that his own intuition was
correct. He had known all the time, he said, that he was speaking to
none other than Lord Blandamer.

Westray thought the matter important enough to justify him in going to
London to consult Sir George Farquhar, as to the changes in the scheme
of restoration which Lord Blandamer's munificence made possible; but Mr
Sharnall, at any rate, was left to listen to Miss Joliffe's
recollections, surmises, and panegyrics.

In spite of all the indifference which the organist had affected when he
first heard the news, he showed a surprising readiness to discuss the
affair with all comers, and exhibited no trace of his usual impatience
with Miss Joliffe, so long as she was talking of Lord Blandamer. To
Anastasia it seemed as if he could talk of nothing else, and the more
she tried to check him by her silence or by change of subject, the more
bitterly did he return to the attack.

The only person to exhibit no interest in this unhappy nobleman, who had
outraged propriety by offering to contribute to the restoration of the
minster, was Anastasia herself; and even tolerant Miss Joliffe was moved
to chide her niece's apathy in this particular.

"I do not think it becomes us, love, young or old, to take so little
notice of great and good deeds. Mr Sharnall is, I fear, discontented
with the station of life to which it has pleased Providence to call him,
and I am less surprised at _his_ not always giving praise where praise
should be given; but with the young it is different. I am sure if
anyone had offered to restore Wydcombe Church when I was a girl--and
specially a nobleman--I should have been as delighted, or nearly as
delighted, as if he--as if I had been given a new frock." She altered
the "as if he had given me