er
dinner. The evil moment she put off from half-hour to half-hour,
still looking as though all were quiet within her bosom as she sat
beside him with her book in her hand. He was again at work before she
began her story; he thought at least that he was at work, for he had
before him on the table both Prichard and Latham, and was occupied
in making copies from some drawings of skulls which purposed to
represent the cerebral development of certain of our more distant
Asiatic brethren.

"Is it not singular," said be, "that the jaws of men born and bred
in a hunter state should be differently formed from those of the
agricultural tribes?"

"Are they?" said Lady Mason.

"Oh yes; the maxillary profile is quite different. You will see this
especially with the Mongolians, among the Tartar tribes. It seems to
me to be very much the same difference as that between a man and a
sheep, but Prichard makes no such remark. Look here at this fellow;
he must have been intended to eat nothing but flesh; and that raw,
and without any knife or fork."

"I don't suppose they had many knives or forks."

"By close observation I do not doubt that one could tell from a
single tooth not only what food the owner of it had been accustomed
to eat, but what language he had spoken. I say close observation, you
know. It could not be done in a day."

"I suppose not." And then the student again bent over his drawing.
"You see it would have been impossible for the owner of such a jaw
as that to have ground a grain of corn between his teeth, or to have
masticated even a cabbage."

"Lucius," said Lady Mason, becoming courageous on the spur of the
moment, "I want you to leave that for a moment and speak to me."

"Well," said he, putting down his pencil and turning round. "Here I
am."

"You have heard of the lawsuit which I had with your brother when you
were an infant?"

"Of course I have heard of it; but I wish you would not call that man
my brother. He would not own me as such, and I most certainly would
not own him. As far as I can learn he is one of the most detestable
human beings that ever existed."

"You have heard of him from an unfavourable side, Lucius; you should
remember that. He is a hard man, I believe; but I do not know that he
would do anything which he thought to be unjust."

"Why then did he try to rob me of my property?"

"Because he thought that it should have been his own. I cannot see
into his breast, but I presume th