croscope is needed to demonstrate Mr. Kilroy's position in
the scale of being," Beth put in. "It is writ large all over him."

"Good and true, Beth!" said Angelica, smiling. "You can go and gloat
over your worthless specimen as a reward, if you like. But the
scientific mind is a mystery to me, and I shall never understand how
you have the patience to do it."

Beth found Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce pacing about her sitting-room,
biting his nails in an irritable manner.

"You were at lunch, I think," he said. "I wonder why I was not asked
in?"

Beth said nothing.

"I consider it a slight on Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy's part," he pursued
huffily. "Why should _I_ be singled out for this kind of thing?"

"Aren't you just a little touchy?" Beth suggested.

"I confess I am sensitive, if that is what you mean," he replied.

"Well, yes, if you like," she said, "hyper-sensitive. But I thought
you asked for me."

"It is true I came to see you; but that is no reason why I should be
slighted by your friends--especially when I came because I think I
have something to show you that will interest you." He took a little
packet from the breast-pocket of his coat as he spoke, and began to
undo it. "I took the trouble to go all the way home to get them to
show you. My mother was the only person who had them. They are
photographs of myself when I was a boy."

"I wonder your mother parted with them," Beth said.

"I persuaded her with difficulty," he rejoined complacently. "I have
often tried before, but nothing would induce her to part with them,
until this time, when a bright idea occurred to me. I told her they
were to be published among portraits of celebrated people when my new
book comes out, and naturally she liked the idea. Her only son, you
know!"

"And are they to be published?" Beth asked.

"Oh--well--of course I hope so--some day," he answered, smiling and
hesitating. "But the truth is I got them for you."

Beth did not thank him, but he was too engrossed with his own
portraits to notice the omission. She was interested in them, too,
when at last he let her look at them.

"What do you think of that?" he asked, showing her a good likeness of
himself as she remembered him. "I was a pretty boy then, I think, with
my curls! Burning the midnight oil had not bared my forehead in those
days, and my beard had not grown. Life was all poetry then!" he sighed
affectedly. What had once been spontaneous feeling in him had become a
me