conversation she was conscious of being much
observed by two or three people in the room; notably by Brooke Dalton,
who had planted himself in a position from which he could look at her
without attracting the other visitors' remark; and also by a tall man
with a dark, melancholy face, deep-set eyes, and a peaked Vandyke beard,
whose glances were more furtive than those of Dalton, but equally
interested and intent. He was a handsome man, and Lettice found herself
wondering whether he were not "somebody," and somebody worth talking to,
moreover; for he was receiving, in a languid, half-indifferent manner, a
great deal of homage from the women in the room. He seemed bored by it,
and was turning away in relief from a lady who had just quoted
half-a-dozen lines of Shelley for his especial behoof, when Mrs.
Hartley, who had been discussing Feuerbach and the German materialists
with Lettice, caught his eye, and beckoned him to her side.

"Mr. Walcott," she said, "I never heard that you were a materialist, and
I don't think it is very likely; so you can condole with Miss Campion on
having been condemned to translate five hundred pages of Feuerbach. Now,
isn't that terrible?"

"I don't know Feuerbach," said the poet, after he had bowed to Lettice,
"but it sounds warm and comfortable on a wintry day. Nevertheless, I do
condole with her."

"I am not sure that I need condolence," said Lettice. "The work was
really very interesting, and one likes to know what any philosopher has
to say for himself, whether one believes in his theories or not. I must
say I have enjoyed reading Feuerbach,--though he _is_ a German with a
translatable name."

This was a flippant speech, as Lettice acknowledged to herself; but,
then, Mr. Walcott's speech had been flippant to begin with, and she
wanted to give as good as she got.

"You read German, then?" said Walcott, sitting down in the chair that
Mrs. Hartley had vacated, and looking at Lettice with interest, although
he did not abandon the slight affectation of tone and manner that she
had noted from the beginning of her talk with him. "How nice that must
be! I often wish I knew something more than my schoolboy's smattering of
Greek, Latin, and French."

Lettice had read Mr. Walcott's last volume of poems, which were just
then exciting considerable interest in the literary world, and she could
not help recalling one or two lyrics and sonnets from Uhland, Filicaja,
and other Continentals. As th