ather heavy features; he studiously affects a solemn and imposing
gravity of face and manner, and a severe and elderly style of dress,
which he hopes may produce a favourable effect upon the non-legal minds
of his somewhat imaginary clients.

It is doubtful, however, whether Mr. Pryme has not found a shorter and
pleasanter road to fortune than that slow and toilsome route along which
the legal muse leads her patient votaries.

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes elapse, and still Mr. Pryme looks patiently
out of the window, and still he whistles the Song of the Bells. The only
sign of weariness he gives is to take out his watch, which, by the way,
is suspended by a broad black ribbon, and lives, not in his waistcoat
pocket, but in a "fob," and is further decorated by a very large and
old-fashioned seal. Having consulted a time piece which for size and
thickness might have belonged to his great-grandfather, he returns it to
his fob, and resumes his whistling.

Presently a door at the further end of the corridor softly opens and
shuts, and Mr. Pryme looks up quickly.

Beatrice Miller, looking about her a little guiltily, comes swiftly
towards him along the passage.

"Mamma kept me such ages!" she says, breathlessly; "I thought I should
never get away."

"Never mind, so long as you are here," he answers, holding her by
both hands. "My darling, I must have a kiss; I hungered for one all
yesterday."

He looks into her face eagerly and lovingly. To most people Beatrice is a
plain girl, but to this man she is beautiful; his own love for her has
invested her with a charm and a fascination that no one else has seen in
her.

Oh! divine passion, that can thus glorify its object. It is like a dash
of sunshine over a winter landscape, which transforms it into the
loveliness of spring; or the magic brush of the painter, which can turn a
ploughed field and a barren common into the golden glories of a Cuyp or a
Turner.

Thus it was with Herbert Pryme. He looked at Beatrice with the blinding
glamour of his own love in his eyes, and she was beautiful to him. Truth
to say, Beatrice was a woman whom to love once was to love always. There
was so much that was charming and loveable in her character, so great a
freshness of mind and soul about her, that, although from lack of beauty
she had hitherto failed to attract love, having once secured it, she
possessed that rare and valuable faculty of being able to retain it,
which many women, e