tue, with face
immobile as Marble--black marble--and a tinder-box ready in his hand.

"Why? . . ."

He could not be sure if it were a word, or merely a sigh, deep in her
breast, so faintly it reached him. She had murmured it as if to
herself, yet it seemed to hang on a question. His ear was alert.

"Hush!" he said, speaking low and without glancing towards her, for the
eyes of the crowd were on them. "The faintness is over?"

"Yes."

"Do not talk at all. By-and-by we will talk. Now I am going to ask you
a selfish question, and you are just to bend your head for 'yes' or
'no.' Will the smell of tobacco distress you, or bring the faintness
back? These autumn flies sting abominably here, under the trees."

She moved her head slowly. "I do not feel them," she said after a
while.

He glanced at her compassionately before nodding to Manasseh for a
light. "No, poor wretch, I'll be sworn you do not," he muttered between
the puffs. "Thank you, Manasseh; and now will you step down to the Inn,
order the horses back to stable, and bring George and Harry back with
you? I may require them to break a head or two here, if there should be
trouble. Tell Alexander"--this was the coachman--"to have an eye on
Master Dicky, and see that he gets his dinner. The child is on no
account to come here, or be told about this. His papa is detained on
business--you understand? Yes, and by the way, you may extract a book
from the valise--the Calderon, for choice, or if it come handier, that
second volume of Corneille. Don't waste time, though, in searching for
this or that. In the stocks I've no doubt a book is a book: the
instrument has a reputation for levelling."

Manasseh departed on his errand, and for a while the Collector paid no
heed to his companion. He and she were now unprotected, at the mercy of
the mob if it intended mischief; and the next few minutes would be
critical.

He sat immersed apparently in his own thoughts, and by the look on his
face these were serious thoughts. He seemed to see and yet not to see
the ring of faces; to be aware of them, yet not concerned with them, no
whit afraid and quite as little defiant. True, he was smoking, but
without a trace of affected insouciance or bravado; gravely rather,
resting an elbow on his groin and leaning forward with a preoccupied
frown. Two minutes passed in this silence, and he felt the danger
ebbing. Mob insolence ever wants a lead, and--perhaps because