and still upon Gibeon, as
that it could be made to falsify men's characters in delineating their
features. What Abner Power thought he himself best knew. He might have
seen such pictures before; or he might never have heard of them.

While pretending to resume his reading he closely observed Paula, as did
also Charlotte De Stancy; but thanks to the self-management which
was Miss Power's as much by nature as by art, she dissembled whatever
emotion was in her.

'It is a pity a professional man should make himself so ludicrous,' she
said with such careless intonation that it was almost impossible,
even for Charlotte, who knew her so well, to believe her indifference
feigned.

'Yes,' said Mr. Power, since Charlotte did not speak: 'it is what I
scarcely should have expected.'

'O, I am not surprised!' said Paula quickly. 'You don't know all.' The
inference was, indeed, inevitable that if her uncle were made aware of
the telegram he would see nothing unlikely in the picture. 'Well, you
are very silent!' continued Paula petulantly, when she found that nobody
went on talking. 'What made you cry out "O," Charlotte, when Mr. Dare
dropped that horrid photograph?'

'I don't know; I suppose it frightened me,' stammered the girl.

'It was a stupid fuss to make before such a person. One would think you
were in love with Mr. Somerset.'

'What did you say, Paula?' inquired her uncle, looking up from the
newspaper which he had again resumed.

'Nothing, Uncle Abner.' She walked to the window, and, as if to tide
over what was plainly passing in their minds about her, she began to
make remarks on objects in the street. 'What a quaint being--look,
Charlotte!' It was an old woman sitting by a stall on the opposite side
of the way, which seemed suddenly to hit Paula's sense of the humorous,
though beyond the fact that the dame was old and poor, and wore a white
handkerchief over her head, there was really nothing noteworthy about
her.

Paula seemed to be more hurt by what the silence of her companions
implied--a suspicion that the discovery of Somerset's depravity was
wounding her heart--than by the wound itself. The ostensible ease with
which she drew them into a bye conversation had perhaps the defect
of proving too much: though her tacit contention that no love was in
question was not incredible on the supposition that affronted pride
alone caused her embarrassment. The chief symptom of her heart being
really tender towards Some