ming towards us. She was quite close before he had seen
her--thirty yards at the utmost. I know not if she had ever been as he
described her, or whether it was but some ideal which he carried in his
brain. The person upon whom I looked was tall, it is true, but she was
thick and shapeless, with a ruddy, full-blown face, and a skirt
grotesquely gathered up. There was a green ribbon in her hat, which
jarred upon my eyes, and her blouse-like bodice was full and clumsy.
And this was the lovely girl, the ever youthful! My heart sank as I
thought how little such a woman might appreciate him, how unworthy she
might be of his love.

She came up the path in her solid way, while he staggered along to meet
her. Then, as they came together, looking discreetly out of the
furthest corner of my eye, I saw that he put out both his hands, while
she, shrinking from a public caress, took one of them in hers and shook
it. As she did so I saw her face, and I was easy in my mind for my old
man. God grant that when this hand is shaking, and when this back is
bowed, a woman's eyes may look so into mine.

A PHYSIOLOGIST'S WIFE.

Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to breakfast at the usual
hour. The presentation chiming-clock which stood between the
terra-cotta busts of Claude Bernard and of John Hunter upon the
dining-room mantelpiece had rung out the half-hour and the
three-quarters. Now its golden hand was verging upon the nine, and yet
there were no signs of the master of the house.

It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the twelve years that she
had kept house for him, his youngest sister had never known him a
second behind his time. She sat now in front of the high silver
coffee-pot, uncertain whether to order the gong to be resounded or to
wait on in silence. Either course might be a mistake. Her brother was
not a man who permitted mistakes.

Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle height, thin, with
peering, puckered eyes, and the rounded shoulders which mark the
bookish woman. Her face was long and spare, flecked with colour above
the cheek-bones, with a reasonable, thoughtful forehead, and a dash of
absolute obstinacy in her thin lips and prominent chin. Snow white
cuffs and collar, with a plain dark dress, cut with almost Quaker-like
simplicity, bespoke the primness of her taste. An ebony cross hung
over her flattened chest. She sat very upright in her chair, listening
with raised eyebro