"Yes, I fancy uncle got that last night." "You read French, of course?" "I! No, indeed!" Again she laughed. "You mustn't imagine, Mr. Larch," she went on, and her small eyes twinkled, "that I am at all like uncle. I'm not. I've only kept house for him a little while, and we are really--quite different." "How do you mean, 'like uncle'?" "Well," the quiet voice was imperceptibly raised, "I'm not a great reader, and I know nothing of books. I'm not clever, you know. I can't bear poetry." Richard looked indulgent. "But you do read?" "Yes, sometimes a novel. I'm reading 'East Lynne.' Uncle bought it for me the other day." "And you like it?" There was a timid tap at the door, and a short, stout servant with red hands and a red face entered; her rough, chubby forearms were bare, and she carried a market basket. "Please, 'm," she ejaculated meaningly and disappeared. Mr. Aked's niece excused herself, and when she returned Richard looked at his watch and rose. "I'm very sorry about uncle--but it's just like him." "Yes, isn't it?" Richard answered, and they exchanged a smile. He walked down Carteret Street humming a tuneless air and twirling his stick. Mr. Aked's niece had proved rather disappointing. She was an ordinary girl, and evidently quite unsusceptible to the artistic influences which subtly emanated from Mr. Aked. But with the exception of his landlady and his landlady's daughter, she was the first woman whom Richard had met in London, and the interview had been somewhat of an ordeal. Yes, it was matter for regret. Suppose she had been clever, witty, full of that "nameless charm" with which youths invest the ideal maidens of their dreams--with which, indeed, during the past week he had invested her! He might have married her. Then, guided by the experience of a sympathetic uncle-in-law, he would have realised all his ambitions. A vision of Mr. Richard Larch, the well-known editor, and his charming wife, giving a dinner-party to a carefully selected company of literary celebrities, flitted before him. Alas! The girl's "East Lynne," her drawing-room ballads, the mean little serving-maid, the complacent vulgarity of the room, the house, the street, the neighbourhood, combined effectually to dispel it. He felt sure that she had no aspirations.