on his guests, with a pride that was evident at
even a casual glance. Again Leigh encountered that look which had so
deeply attracted him. Her eyes were very dark, and almost misty in
their warm light, as if she were somewhat dazed by long perusal of the
printed page. She possessed also that mark of feminine beauty so
prized by the ancients, a low forehead, and there was a suggestion of
the classic in the arrangement of her hair. He found her smile
peculiarly winning, and was conscious of the responsiveness of her
fingers, so different from the limp passivity of many a feminine
greeting. Though not more given to self-importance than the average
young man, he was somehow aware that she too remembered their first
casual encounter. Her failure to mention it now served only to invest
it with the greater significance.

"Miss Felicity," Cardington began, when they had become seated, "I
suspect that you were racing against time, endeavouring, in fact, to
finish that book before our arrival should interrupt you."

"You would not have been welcome a moment sooner," she admitted.

"Felicity is a deep student in shallow literature," the bishop put in
epigrammatically.

"As if Zola were ever shallow," she said. "I'll leave it with Mr.
Leigh."

"You can search me for an opinion," he replied; and in the breezy
colloquialism of the expression, no less than in a certain vividness of
manner, his isolation from the others became apparent. "My French
reading is mostly confined to astronomical monographs."

"Miss Felicity," Cardington interposed, with an elaborate and
old-fashioned gallantry that became him, "Mr. Leigh is a student of
stars, and therefore he is more concerned with the reader than with the
book. If you will persist in shining upon him so dazzlingly, you
cannot be surprised if he turns an unseeing eye upon any object you may
present for his inspection. Now, since I have basked longer in your
light, I may perhaps--allow me." He reached for the book and began to
turn over the leaves. She watched his growing absorption with
indulgent amusement, and the comradeship of the two omnivorous readers
was evident. Cardington was frankly reading, oblivious of his hosts, a
liberty which indicated his familiar standing in that house.

"I have a weakness for polymathists of the old school," the bishop
remarked, harking back to his guest's confession of narrower interests,
"of which class I may say that Professor Cardin