tter of business, to be sure--at all events in the
first instance.

For a long time Marian had scarcely looked up from the desk, but at this
moment she found it necessary to refer to the invaluable Larousse. As so
often happened, the particular volume of which she had need was not upon
the shelf she turned away, and looked about her with a gaze of weary
disappointment. At a little distance were standing two young men,
engaged, as their faces showed, in facetious colloquy; as soon as she
observed them, Marian's eyes fell, but the next moment she looked again
in that direction. Her face had wholly changed; she wore a look of timid
expectancy.

The men were moving towards her, still talking and laughing. She turned
to the shelves, and affected to search for a book. The voices drew near,
and one of them was well known to her; now she could hear every word;
now the speakers were gone by. Was it possible that Mr Milvain had not
recognised her? She followed him with her eyes, and saw him take a seat
not far off he must have passed without even being aware of her.

She went back to her place and for some minutes sat trifling with a pen.
When she made a show of resuming work, it was evident that she could no
longer apply herself as before. Every now and then she glanced at people
who were passing; there were intervals when she wholly lost herself in
reverie. She was tired, and had even a slight headache. When the hand of
the clock pointed to half-past three, she closed the volume from which
she had been copying extracts, and began to collect her papers.

A voice spoke close behind her.

'Where's your father, Miss Yule?'

The speaker was a man of sixty, short, stout, tonsured by the hand of
time. He had a broad, flabby face, the colour of an ancient turnip,
save where one of the cheeks was marked with a mulberry stain; his
eyes, grey-orbed in a yellow setting, glared with good-humoured
inquisitiveness, and his mouth was that of the confirmed gossip. For
eyebrows he had two little patches of reddish stubble; for moustache,
what looked like a bit of discoloured tow, and scraps of similar
material hanging beneath his creasy chin represented a beard. His garb
must have seen a great deal of Museum service; it consisted of a jacket,
something between brown and blue, hanging in capacious shapelessness,
a waistcoat half open for lack of buttons and with one of the pockets
coming unsewn, a pair of bronze-hued trousers which had all