looking for something—she had
forgotten what already—Mr. Kelly lounged in.
Mrs. Lyndon and Miss Manvers glanced at
each other, and each lady drew herself up
tight in her particular corner of the sofa,
with a soldier-in-a-sentry-box kind of look,
that told plainly enough they were on guard,
and could not be bought off at any price.

Mr. Kelly was the gentleman alluded to in
the opening conversation; that boarding-house
miracle, a man of five hundred a year
and expectations. He was always very
attentive, according to his own notions of
attention, to Mildred Smith; or, as Mrs.
Lyndon phrased it, "was being taken in by
that artful girl." And as he was the richest
and best born man of the establishment, his
regard was a great deal prized, and
pronounced decidedly too good a thing for
Mildred. And more than once he had been
attacked both by open accusation and covert
sneer about her, and had been asked "When
the day was to be?" and she had been
alluded to as "the future Mrs. K.;" and if
by chance she was absent at dinner, Kelly
was exhorted to keep up his appetite, and
delicate things were pressed on him because
he was down-hearted and could not eat;
with sundry other well-known arts by which
hostile women prejudice men against one of
their own sex in the beginning of an affair.
But Mr. Kelly, who was a curious, loose-limbed,
lounging fellow, enamoured of old
curiosity shops, and all manner of out-of-the-way
things, did not care much what any one
said, whether for praise or ridicule; but
shambled on in his own way, and made queer
love to Mildred, to the scandal of the other
ladies, mainly attracted to her because she
was about as odd as himself, in a different way.
She was morally what a rare bit of Dresden,
or a monumental brass, or a unique species
of scarabæus or trochilus was artistically;
and he valued her accordingly.

He went now directly to the piano where
she stood, speaking to her in his slow, drawling
voice, with all the words looped together
by a thin line of sound, and all the a's
pronounced aws. But he spoke gently, and
flatteringly too. The sentinels glanced
again, and Miss Manvers broke the knot of
her netting by drawing the stitch too sharply
home. Mildred coloured as she answered
his question: it was only "What was she
looking for?"—speaking in her queer little
way, half-glancing up, and half-turning her
back—or, at least, one shoulder with a
coaxing, pretty kind of shyness, that makes
a man inclined to treat a woman like a
child.

"I am looking for Herz, mein Herz," said
Mildred, peering over the pages, and fluttering
them about.

"Can I help you?" he asked, lounging on
to his other leg, and shuffling with his elbows
on the piano.

"No, thank you, Mr. Kelly."

"May I never help you?" he added in a
lower voice, but very much as if he had asked
the price of a marble Venus, or an embroidered
stole, it was so lazily and shamblingly
said.

"Oh yes! perhaps I shall some day ask
you for your help, very boldly," said Mildred,
looking straight into his eyes; and looking
so that the sentinels could see her.

"What the deuce does she mean?" thought
the possessor of five hundred a year. "Does
she understand me, or is she only playing with
me? Or is she as innocent as she pretends
to be, and knows no more of love than she
does of archaeology?"

"Will you be kind enough to copy this for
me to-night?" said Mildred, suddenly coming
back, and holding out her piece of music.
She spoke then like a spoiled beauty, with
her head up and her eyes wide open, and she
held out her music royally. All this to show
off before her enemies.

"Certainly—yes," said Mr. Kelly, with
wonderful vivacity.

Mildred smiled her triumphant smile, and
then clouding down into nervousness and
embarrassment again, stumbled over her feet
out of the room, her head bent quite into her
twitching shoulders.

"Did you see her look at him?" whispered
Mrs. Lyndon. "Did you ever see such
presumption?"

"Never," answered Miss Manvers; "her
effrontery is quite frightful! What Mr.
Kelly can see in her, I cannot imagine! Why,
her nose is a mere snub, and she has no
eyebrows!" Miss Manvers had a Grecian nose
pointed at the end, and a pair of pencilled
eyebrows; they were her own facial points
d'appui, and her essentials of beauty in others.
For she would have allowed Aspasia no
loveliness, nor even Venus herself, without straight
noses and narrow lines above the eye.

Mr. Kelly took no notice of their whisperings,
but lounged to the opposite sofa, where
he flung himself at full length, with his feet
on the end cushion; as men do in boarding-
houses. And, let us hope, no where else. And
there he remained with his eyes closed, and
his crossed ankles drumming against each
other, until the bell rang for dinner.

As Mildred went down stairs, she met
Henry Harley coming in from the Academy,
where he had been spending his morning.
Henry was an amateur artist, who drew
lengthy figures with attenuated limbs, and
heads without any place for the brains; for
his style was elegance rather than power, he
used to say:—''a disciple of Raphael, my
dear sir, more than of Michael Angelo." He
used to teach Mildred, for love; and make
the most of the bargain; for he got more love
than he gave knowledge by a vast deal, spending
the hours he was assumed to be giving
drawing-lessons in discussions not calculated
to do a young girl any good.

"My little Mildred!" he cried, seizing her