ppeared. Beth
wondered if he kept his caution up before the footmen in the hall, or
if he made an undignified bolt of it the moment he was out of sight of
society.

At dinner that evening she asked Mrs. Kilroy who and what that
thin-nosed man, that sort of reminiscence of Shakespeare, was.

"He is by way of being a literary man, I believe," Angelica answered.
"He is not a friend of ours, and I cannot think why he comes here. I
never ask him. He got himself introduced to me somehow, and then came
and called, which I thought an impertinence. Did you notice that woman
with an Alsatian bow in her bonnet, that made her look like a horse
with its ears laid back? Her pose is to improve young men. She
improves them away from their wives, and I object to the method; and I
do not ask her here either. Yet she comes. His wife I have much
sympathy with; but he keeps her in the country, out of the way, so I
see very little of her."

"What is his name?" Beth asked.

"Alfred Cayley Pounce."

"Why!" Beth exclaimed. "He must be a youth I knew long ago, when I was
a child. I was sure I had seen him before. But what a falling off! I
wondered if he were an old young man, or a young old man when I first
saw him. He was refined as a boy and had artistic leanings; I should
have thought he might have developed something less banal in the time
than a bald forehead."

"That kind of man spends most of his time in cultivating acquaintances,"
said Mr. Kilroy. "When he hasn't birth, his pose is usually brains. But
Pounce took a fair degree at the University. And he's not such a bad
fellow, really. He's precious, of course, and by way of being
literary--that is to say, he is literary to the extent of having written
some little things of no consequence, upon which he assumes the right to
give his opinion, with appalling assurance, of the works of other
people, which are of consequence. There is a perfect epidemic of that
kind of assurance among the clever young men of the day, and it's
wrecking half of them. A man who begins by having no doubt of the worth
of his own opinion gets no further for want of room to move in."

Next day Beth was alone in a sunny sitting-room at the back of the
house, looking out into grounds common to the whole square. It was
about tea-time. The windows were wide open, the sunblinds were drawn
down outside, and the warm air, fragrant with mignonette, streamed in
over the window boxes. Angelica had given this room up