how much he had built upon the wild new hope of the last
two days.

Presently a slight discreet cough broke upon his ear, apparently close
at hand.

He started up, and, wheeling round in the direction of the sound, called
out, in sudden anger, "Who is there?"

If there is a time when we feel that a fellow-creature is entirely out
of harmony with ourselves, it is when we discover that he has overheard
or overseen us at a moment when we imagined we were alone, or--almost
alone.

Charles was furious.

"Come out!" he said, in a tone that would have made any ordinary
creature stay as far _in_ as it could. And hearing a slight crackling
in the nearest horse-box, of which the door stood open, he shook the
door violently.

"Come out," he repeated, "this instant!"

"Stop that noise, then," said a voice sharply from the inside, "and keep
quiet. By ----, a violent temper, what a thing it is; always raising a
dust, and kicking up a row, just when it's least wanted."

The voice made Charles start.

"Great God!" he said, "it's not--"

"Yes, it is," was the reply; "and when you have taken a seat on the
farther end of that bench, and recovered your temper, I'll show, and not
before."

Charles walked to the bench and sat down.

"You can come out," he said, in a carefully lowered voice, in which
there was contempt as well as anger.

Accordingly there was a little more crackling among the fagots, and a
slight, shabbily dressed man came to the door and peered warily out,
shading his blinking eyes with his hand.

"If there is a thing I hate," he said, with a curious mixture of
recklessness and anxiety, "it is a noise. Sit so that you face the left,
will you, and I'll look after the right, and if you see any one coming
you may as well mention it. I am only at home to old friends."

He took his hand from his eyes as they became more accustomed to the
light, and showed a shrewd, dissipated face, that yet had a kind of
ruined good looks about it, and, what was more hateful to Charles than
anything else, a decided resemblance to Ruth. Though he was shabby in
the extreme, his clothes sat upon him as they always and only do sit
upon a gentleman; and, though his face and voice showed that he had
severed himself effectually from the class in which he had been born, a
certain unsuitability remained between his appearance and his evidently
disreputable circumstances. When Charles looked at him he was somehow
reminded of a broken-