bride, and his train. Christobel had
followed him, and stood, a dignified, but somewhat lonely figure, just
within the doorway. She had been to this shop with her father, during
his lifetime, on several occasions, and had since often written for
books. The bookseller came forward. He was a man possessed of the
useful faculty of remembering faces and the names appertaining to them.
Also he had cultivated the habit of taking an intelligent interest in
his customers. But he did not connect this beautiful waiting figure,
with the absorbed back of the Professor.

"What can I do for you to-day, Miss Charteris?" he inquired, with ready
courtesy.

Christobel started. "Nothing to-day, thank you, Mr. Taylor. But I am
much obliged to you for so often supplying my requirements by return of
post. And, by the way, you have an excellent memory. It is many years
since I came here last, with my father."

"Professor Charteris was one of my best customers," said the
bookseller, in an undertone of deferential sympathy. "I never knew a
finer judge of a book than he. If I may be allowed to say so, I deeply
deplored his loss, Miss Charteris."

Christobel smiled, and gently unbent, allowing the kindly expression of
appreciation and regret to reach her with comfort in these moments of
dream-like isolation. A friendly hand seemed to have been outstretched
across the chasm which divides the passionately regretted past, from
the scarcely appreciated present. She could see her father's tall
scholarly figure, as he stood lovingly fingering a book, engaged in
earnest conversation with Mr. Taylor, regardless of the passing of
time; until she was obliged to lay her hand on his arm, and hurry him
through the crowded streets, down the steep incline, to the platform
from which the Cambridge express was on the point of starting. And
when safely seated, with barely a minute to spare, he would turn to
her, with a smile of gentle reproof, saying: "But, my dear child, we
had not concluded our conversation." And she would laugh and say: "But
we had to get home to-night, Papa." Whereupon he would lean back,
contentedly, replying: "Quite right, my dear. So we had."

Ah, happy those whose fathers and mothers still walk the earth beside
them. Youth remains, notwithstanding the passing of years, while there
is still a voice to say, in reproof or approbation: "My child."

But the bookseller, not yet connecting her with the Professor, still
w