me and hear it,
before I decide to send it anywhere at all."

The reading actually took place on an evening in May, when the Vicar had
accompanied his younger sister up to Exeter Hall; and at the last moment
I also received a verbal invitation, delivered and inspired by that
rascal Uvo, who declared that I had let him in for the infliction and
must bear my share. More justly, he argued that the pair of us might
succeed in keeping each other awake, whereas one alone would infallibly
disgrace himself; and we had solemnly agreed upon a system of
watch-and-watch, by the alternate quarter-of-an-hour, before we
presented ourselves at the temporary vicarage after supper.

Miss Julia received us in stiff silk that supplied a sort of sibilant
obbligato to a nervous welcome; and her voice maintained a secretive
pitch, even when the maid had served coffee and shut the door behind
her, lending a surreptitious air to the proceedings before they could be
said to have begun. It was impossible not to wonder what the Vicar would
have said to see his elderly sister discoursing profane fiction to a
pair of heathens who seldom set foot inside his church.

He would scarcely have listened with our resignation; for poor Miss
Julia read as badly as she wrote, and never was story opened with
clumsier ineptitude than hers. We had sheet upon typewritten sheet about
the early life and virtuous vicissitudes of some deplorably dull young
female in the east end of London; and in my case slumber was imminent
when the noble villain made his entry in the cinnamon waistcoat of the
picture at Hampton Court. At that I tried to catch Uvo's eye, but it was
already fixed upon the reader's face with an intensity which soon
attracted her attention.

"Isn't that your idea of him, Mr. Delavoye?" asked Miss Julia,
apprehensively.

"Well, yes, it is; but it was Sir Godfrey Kneller's first," said Uvo,
laughing. "So you took the trouble to go all the way over there to study
his portrait, Miss Brabazon?"

"What portrait? All the way over where, Mr. Delavoye?"

Uvo entered into particulars which left the lady's face a convincing
blank. She had seen no portrait; it was years since she had been through
the galleries at Hampton Court, and then without a catalogue. Uvo
seemed to experience so much difficulty in crediting this disclaimer,
that I asked whether cinnamon had not been a favourite colour with the
bloods of the eighteenth century. On his assent the readin