asker. Partly it reciprocated the other's feeling, no
doubt; and then one generally looks with indulgence on a man whom one
has discovered and developed.

'Does he go on with his literature?'

'No. The title is, "Thoughts for the Present."'

Mr. Dalmaine leaned back and laughed. It was a hearty laugh.

'I foresaw it, I foresaw it! And how many hearers has he?'

'Six only.'

'To be sure.'

'But there is something more. Mr. Egremont is going to present Lambeth
with a free public library. He has taken a building.'

'A fact? How do you know that, Tasker?'

'I heard it at the club last night. He has informed the members of his
class.'

'Ha! He is really going to bleed himself to prove his sincerity?'

They discussed the subject a little longer. Then Mr. Dalmaine dictated
a letter or two that he wished to have off his mind, and after that
bade Tasker good-day.

At half-past four in the afternoon he drove up to a house at Lancaster
Gate, where he had recently been a not infrequent visitor. The servant
preceded him with becoming stateliness to the drawing-room, and
announced his name in the hearing of three ladies, who were pleasantly
chatting in the aroma of tea. The eldest of them was Mrs. Tyrrell; her
companions were Miss Tyrrell and a young married lady paying a call.

Mrs. Tyrrell was one of those excellently preserved matrons who testify
to the wholesome placidity of woman's life in wealthy English homes.
Her existence had taken for granted the perfection of the universe;
probably she had never thought of a problem which did not solve itself
for the pleasant trouble of stating it in refined terms, and certainly
it had never occurred to her that social propriety was distinguishable
from the Absolute Good. She was not a dull woman, and the opposite of
an unfeeling one, but her wits and her heart had both been so subdued
to the social code, that it was very difficult for her to entertain
seriously any mode of thought or action for which she could not recall
a respectable precedent. By nature she was indulgent, of mild
disposition, of sunny intelligence; so endowed, circumstances had
bidden her regard it as the end of her being to respect conventions, to
check her native impulse if ever it went counter to the opinion of
Society, to use her intellect for the sole purpose of discovering how
far it was permitted to be used. And she was a happy woman, had always
been a happy woman. She had known a little trouble i