d see at once that he didn't belong to the vulgar; I should
desire to hear him speak.' And the Warricombes were not lacking in
discernment. He would compare more than favourably with Mr. Moorhouse,
whose aspect, bright and agreeable enough, made no promise of
originality.--It must be time to go down. He left the room with an air
of grave self-confidence.

At dinner he was careful to attempt no repetition of the display which
had done very well at luncheon; it must not be thought that he had the
habit of talking for effect. Mrs. Warricombe, unless he mistook, had
begun to view him more favourably; her remarks made less distinction
between him and the other guests. But he could not like his hostess; he
thought her unworthy to be the mother of Sidwell and Fanny, of Buckland
and Louis; there was a marked strain of the commonplace in her. The
girls, costumed for the evening, affected him with a return of the awe
he had all but overcome. Sidwell was exquisite in dark colours, her
sister in white. Miss Moorhouse (addressed by her friends as 'Sylvia')
looked older than in the day-time, and had lost something of her
animation; possibly the country routine had begun to weary her a little.

Peak was at a vast distance from the hour which saw him alight at
Exeter and begin his ramble about the city. He no longer felt himself
alone in the world; impossible to revive the mood in which he
deliberately planned to consume his economies in a year or two of
desert wandering; far other were the anticipations which warmed his
mind when the after-dinner repose attuned him to unwonted hopefulness.
This family were henceforth his friends, and it depended only upon
himself to make the connection lasting, with all manner of benefits
easily imagined. Established in the country, the Warricombes stood to
him in quite a different relation from any that could have arisen had
he met with them in London. There he would have been nothing more than
a casual dinner-guest, welcomed for the hour and all but forgotten when
he had said good-night. For years he had understood that London offered
him no prospect of social advancement. But a night passed under this
roof practically raised him to a level whence he surveyed a rich field
of possible conquest. With the genial geologist he felt himself on
excellent terms, and much of this was ascribable to a singular chance
which had masked his real being, and represented him, with scarce an
effort of his own, in a