lldon thought that she would rather have had some one who was
neither clever nor well-read. But there was no help for her, and,
whether she would or not, she had to go in to dinner with the literary
lion.

Mr. Mark Shrewsbury was a novelist of great ability. Some twenty years
before, he had been called to the bar, and, conscious of real talent, had
been greatly embittered by the impossibility of getting on in his
profession. At length, in disgust, he gave up all hopes of success and
devoted himself instead to literature. In this field he won the
recognition for which he craved; his books were read everywhere, his name
became famous, his income steadily increased, and he had the pleasant
consciousness that he had found his vocation. Still, in spite of his
success, he could not forget the bitter years of failure and
disappointment which had gone before, and though his novels were full of
genius they were pervaded by an undertone of sarcasm, so that people
after reading them were more ready than before to take cynical views of
life.

He was one of those men whose quiet impassive faces reveal scarcely
anything of their character. He was neither tall nor short, neither dark
nor fair, neither handsome nor the reverse; in fact his personality was
not in the least impressive; while, like most true artists, he observed
all things so quietly that you rarely discovered that he was observing at
all.

"Dear me!" people would say, "Is Mark Shrewsbury really here? Which is
he? I don't see any one at all like my idea of a novelist."

"There he is--that man in spectacles," would be the reply.

And really the spectacles were the only noteworthy thing about him.

Mrs. Selldon, who had seen several authors and authoresses in her time,
and knew that they were as a rule most ordinary, hum-drum kind of people,
was quite prepared for her fate. She remembered her astonishment as a
girl when, having laughed and cried at the play, and taken the chief
actor as her ideal hero, she had had him pointed out to her one day in
Regent Street, and found him to be a most commonplace-looking man, the
very last person one would have supposed capable of stirring the hearts
of a great audience.

Meanwhile dinner progressed, and Mrs. Selldon talked to an empty-headed
but loquacious man on her left, and racked her brains for something to
say to the alarmingly silent author on her right. She remembered hearing
that Charles Dickens would often si