The study-hour over, they gathered in groups, chatting together on such themes as school-girls find most interesting, one or another now and then looking askance at Lulu, who sat at a distance, lonely and forlorn, watching them and half-envying their apparent gayety and lightheartedness. How she longed for Evelyn, Grace, Max; even Rosie and the grown up-people at Viamede!

He re-arranged the papers, possibly in the very order in which he had found them, replaced them in my breast-pocket, and was gone. His visit, I think, did not quite last three minutes. Very soon after his disappearance I heard the voice of the Marquis once more. He got in, and I saw him look at me and smile, half-envying me, I fancied, my sound repose. If he had but known all!

But I could not leave it so. I said to him coldly I daresay: "Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not amongst my own family." Percivale took his hat off. "Forgive my seeming rudeness, Mr. Walton. I was half-envying and half-wondering. You would not be surprised at my unconscious behaviour if you had seen as much of the wrong side of the stuff as I have seen in London."