introduced himself?" Emily repeated, in amazement. "From
Cecilia's description of him, I should have thought he was the last
person in the world to do that!"

Alban smiled. "And you would like to know how it happened?" he
suggested.

"The very favor I was going to ask of you," she replied.

Instead of at once complying with her wishes, he paused--hesitated--and
made a strange request. "Will you forgive my rudeness, if I ask leave to
walk up and down the room while I talk? I am a restless man. Walking up
and down helps me to express myself freely."

Her f ace brightened for the first time. "How like You that is!" she
exclaimed.

Alban looked at her with surprise and delight. She had betrayed an
interest in studying his character, which he appreciated at its full
value. "I should never have dared to hope," he said, "that you knew me
so well already."

"You are forgetting your story," she reminded him.

He moved to the opposite side of the room, where there were fewer
impediments in the shape of furniture. With his head down, and his hands
crossed behind him, he paced to and fro. Habit made him express himself
in his usual quaint way--but he became embarrassed as he went on. Was he
disturbed by his recollections? or by the fear of taking Emily into his
confidence too freely?

"Different people have different ways of telling a story," he said.
"Mine is the methodical way--I begin at the beginning. We will start, if
you please, in the railway--we will proceed in a one-horse chaise--and
we will stop at a village, situated in a hole. It was the nearest place
to Sir Jervis's house, and it was therefore my destination. I picked out
the biggest of the cottages--I mean the huts--and asked the woman at
the door if she had a bed to let. She evidently thought me either mad
or drunk. I wasted no time in persuasion; the right person to plead my
cause was asleep in her arms. I began by admiring the baby; and I ended
by taking the baby's portrait. From that moment I became a member of the
family--the member who had his own way. Besides the room occupied by
the husband and wife, there was a sort of kennel in which the husband's
brother slept. He was dismissed (with five shillings of mine to comfort
him) to find shelter somewhere else; and I was promoted to the vacant
place. It is my misfortune to be tall. When I went to bed, I slept with
my head on the pillow, and my feet out of the window. Very cool and
pleasant in summer weat