er her breath, bending to Marian.

Her daughter passed on the volume, and Mrs Yule read the footnote with
that look of slow apprehension which is so pathetic when it signifies
the heart's good-will thwarted by the mind's defect.

'That'll be good for you, Alfred, won't it?' she said, glancing at her
husband.

'Certainly,' he replied, with a smile of contemptuous irony. 'If Hinks
goes on, he'll establish my reputation.'

And he took a draught of ale, like one who is reinvigorated for the
battle of life. Marian, regarding him askance, mused on what seemed to
her a strange anomaly in his character; it had often surprised her that
a man of his temperament and powers should be so dependent upon the
praise and blame of people whom he justly deemed his inferiors.

Yule was glancing over the pages of the work.

'A pity the man can't write English.' What a vocabulary!
Obstruent--reliable--particularization--fabulosity--different to--averse
to--did one ever come across such a mixture of antique pedantry and
modern vulgarism! Surely he has his name from the German hinken--eh,
Marian?'

With a laugh he tossed the book away again. His mood was wholly changed.
He gave various evidences of enjoying the meal, and began to talk freely
with his daughter.

'Finished the authoresses?'

'Not quite.'

'No hurry. When you have time I want you to read Ditchley's new book,
and jot down a selection of his worst sentences. I'll use them for an
article on contemporary style; it occurred to me this afternoon.'

He smiled grimly. Mrs Yule's face exhibited much contentment, which
became radiant joy when her husband remarked casually that the custard
was very well made to-day. Dinner over, he rose without ceremony and
went off to his study.

The man had suffered much and toiled stupendously. It was not
inexplicable that dyspepsia, and many another ill that literary flesh is
heir to, racked him sore.

Go back to the days when he was an assistant at a bookseller's in
Holborn. Already ambition devoured him, and the genuine love of
knowledge goaded his brain. He allowed himself but three or four hours
of sleep; he wrought doggedly at languages, ancient and modern; he tried
his hand at metrical translations; he planned tragedies. Practically he
was living in a past age; his literary ideals were formed on the study
of Boswell.

The head assistant in the shop went away to pursue a business which
had come into his hands on the death of a re