onfusion of her eyes and her gestures, and the exquisite hesitations of
her voice as she told him about the coincidence which had brought back
to her in his office the poem of her schooldays.

He came to the bookcase and, taking out the volume, handled it
carelessly.

"I only brought these things here because they're nicely bound and fill
up the shelf," he said. "Not much use in a lawyer's office, you know!"
He glanced from the volume to her, and from her to the volume. "Ah! Miss
Miranda! Yes! Well! It isn't so wonderful as all that. My father used to
give her lessons in French. This Hugo was his. He thought a great deal
of it." Mr. Cannon's pose exhibited pride, but it was obvious that he
did not share his father's taste. His tone rather patronized his father,
and Hugo too. As he let the pages of the book slip by under his thumb,
he stopped, and with a very good French accent, quite different from
Hilda's memory of Miss Miranda's, murmured in a sort of chanting--"_Dieu
qui sourit et qui donne_."

"That's the very one!" cried Hilda.

"Ah! There you are then! You see--the bookmark was at that page." Hilda
had not noticed the thin ribbon almost concealed in the jointure of the
pages. "I wouldn't be a bit astonished if my father had lent her this
very book! Curious, isn't it?"

It was. Nevertheless, Hilda felt that his sense of the miraculousness of
life was not so keen as her own; and she was disappointed.

"I suppose you're very fond of reading?" he said.

"No, I'm not," she replied. Her spirit lifted a little courageously, to
meet his with defiance, like a ship lifting its prow above the
threatening billow. Her eyes wavered, but did not fall before his.

"Really! Now, I should have said you were a great reader. What do you do
with yourself?" He now spoke like a brother, confident of a trustful
response.

"I just waste my time," she answered coldly. She saw that he was
puzzled, interested, and piqued, and that he was examining her quite
afresh.

"Well," he said shortly, after a pause, adopting the benevolent tone of
an uncle or even a great-uncle, "you'll be getting married one of these
days."

"I don't want to get married," she retorted obstinately, and with a
harder glance.

"Then what do you want?"

"I don't know." She discovered great relief, even pleasure, in thus
callously exposing her mind to a stranger.

Tapping his teeth with one thumb, he gazed at her, apparently in
meditation upon her peculi