as well?'

'She has not invited me!... Mr. Somerset, not withstanding your
erroneous opinions on important matters, I speak to you as a friend, and
I tell you that she has never in her secret heart forgiven that sermon
of mine, in which I likened her to the church at Laodicea. I admit
the words were harsh, but I was doing my duty, and if the case arose
to-morrow I would do it again. Her displeasure is a deep grief to me;
but I serve One greater than she.... You, of course, are invited to this
dinner?'

'I have heard nothing of it,' murmured the young man.

Their paths diverged; and when Somerset reached the hotel he was
informed that somebody was waiting to see him.

'Man or woman?' he asked.

The landlady, who always liked to reply in person to Somerset's
inquiries, apparently thinking him, by virtue of his drawing implements
and liberality of payment, a possible lord of Burleigh, came forward and
said it was certainly not a woman, but whether man or boy she could not
say. 'His name is Mr. Dare,' she added.

'O--that youth,' he said.

Somerset went upstairs, along the passage, down two steps, round the
angle, and so on to the rooms reserved for him in this rambling edifice
of stage-coach memories, where he found Dare waiting. Dare came forward,
pulling out the cutting of an advertisement.

'Mr. Somerset, this is yours, I believe, from the Architectural World?'

Somerset said that he had inserted it.

'I think I should suit your purpose as assistant very well.'

'Are you an architect's draughtsman?'

'Not specially. I have some knowledge of the same, and want to increase
it.'

'I thought you were a photographer.'

'Also of photography,' said Dare with a bow. 'Though but an amateur in
that art I can challenge comparison with Regent Street or Broadway.'

Somerset looked upon his table. Two letters only, addressed in initials,
were lying there as answers to his advertisement. He asked Dare to
wait, and looked them over. Neither was satisfactory. On this account he
overcame his slight feeling against Mr. Dare, and put a question to
test that gentleman's capacities. 'How would you measure the front of a
building, including windows, doors, mouldings, and every other feature,
for a ground plan, so as to combine the greatest accuracy with the
greatest despatch?'

'In running dimensions,' said Dare.

As this was the particular kind of work he wanted done, Somerset thought
the answer promising. Coming to te