hose of a caryatid; the
arm with which she props her head is as strong as a carter's and
magnificently moulded. The head itself looks immense with its pile of
glossy hair. Reddened by the rays of the fire, her features had a
splendid savagery which seemed strangely at discord with the paltry
surroundings amid which she sat; her eyes just now were gleaming with a
crafty and cruel speculation which would have become those of a
barbarian in ambush. I wonder how it came about that her strain, after
passing through the basest conditions of modern life, had thus reverted
to a type of ancestral exuberance.

'If only he doesn't hear about the old man or the girl from somebody!'
said Mrs. Peckover. 'I've been afraid of it ever since he come into the
'ouse. There's so many people might tell him. You'll have to come round
him sharp, Clem.'

The mother was dressed as her kind are wont to be on Sunday
morning--that is to say, not dressed at all, but hung about with coarse
garments, her hair in unbeautiful disarray. Clem, on the other hand,
seemed to have devoted much attention to her morning toilet; she wore a
dark dress trimmed with velveteen, and a metal ornament of primitive
taste gleamed amid her hair.

'There ain't no mistake?' she asked, after a pause. 'You're jolly sure
of that?'

'Mistake? What a blessed fool you must be! Didn't they advertise in the
papers for him? Didn't the lawyers themselves say as it was something
to his advantage? Don't you say yourself as Jane says her grandfather's
often spoke about him and wished he could find him? How can it be a
mistake? If it was only Bill's letter we had to go on, you might talk;
but--there, don't be a ijiot!'

'If it turned out as he hadn't nothing,' remarked Clem resolutely, 'I'd
leave him, if I was married fifty times.'

Her mother uttered a contemptuous sound. At the same time she moved her
head as if listening; some one was, in fact, descending the stairs.

'Here he comes,' she whispered. 'Get the eggs ready, an' I'll make the
corffee.'

A tap at the door, then entered a tallish man of perhaps forty, though
he might be a year or two younger. His face was clean-shaven,
harsh-featured, unwholesome of complexion; its chief peculiarity was
the protuberance of the bone in front of each temple, which gave him a
curiously animal aspect. His lower lip hung and jutted forward; when he
smiled, as now in advancing to the fire, it slightly overlapped the one
above. His hair