With an even, untiring correctness of utterance, Miss Skeat read one book just as she read another--M.

Thiers or Mr.Henry James, Mark Twain or a Parliamentary Report--it was all one to her.

Poor Miss Skeat! But to Margaret the evening seemed long and the night longer, and many days and evenings and nights afterwards.

Not that she doubted, but that she thought--well--perhaps she thought she ought to doubt.

Some cunning reader of face and character, laughing and making love by turns, had once told her she had more heart than head.