ul after the manner of such works. I couldn't see a trace of the
beauty I found in her in either parent, yet she somehow contrived to be
like them both.

These people pretended in a way that reminded me of the Three Great
Women in my mother's room, but they had not nearly so much social
knowledge and did not do it nearly so well. Also, I remarked, they did
it with an eye on Marion. They had wanted to thank me, they said, for
the kindness to their daughter in the matter of the 'bus fare, and so
accounted for anything unusual in their invitation. They posed as simple
gentlefolk, a little hostile to the rush and gadding-about of London,
preferring a secluded and unpretentious quiet.

When Marion got out the white table-cloth from the sideboard-drawer for
tea, a card bearing the word "APARTMENTS" fell to the floor. I picked it
up and gave it to her before I realised from her quickened colour that I
should not have seen it; that probably had been removed from the window
in honour of my coming.

Her father spoke once in a large remote way of he claims of business
engagements, and it was only long afterwards I realised that he was a
supernumerary clerk in the Walham Green Gas Works and otherwise a useful
man at home. He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown
eyes magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a
paper collar, and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a
large Bible which he had grangerised with photographs of pictures. Also
he cultivated the little garden-yard behind the house, and he had a
small greenhouse with tomatoes. "I wish I 'ad 'eat," he said. "One can
do such a lot with 'eat. But I suppose you can't 'ave everything you
want in this world."

Both he and Marion's mother treated her with a deference that struck me
as the most natural thing in the world. Her own manner changed, became
more authoritative and watchful, her shyness disappeared. She had taken
a line of her own I gathered, draped the mirror, got the second-hand
piano, and broken her parents in.

Her mother must once have been a pretty woman; she had regular features
and Marion's hair without its lustre, but she was thin and careworn.
The aunt, Miss Ramboat, was a large, abnormally shy person very like her
brother, and I don't recall anything she said on this occasion.

To begin with there was a good deal of tension, Marion was frightfully
nervous and every one was under the necessity of behavin