Everybody knows people like Mr. Dempster. We are accustomed to their shifting similitudes, their inability to express themselves, their pretensions, and their good nature. In fact, we do not regard them--we do not recognise that they are peculiar; and when we see one of them singled out and reproduced--on the stage, for example--however faithfully, we call it caricature. Miss Jane had a very narrow circle of acquaintances. The Chartreses, indeed, were all proud originals. For several generations they had mingled little in society, preferring to retain their angularities of character in all the ruggedness of nature, rather than submit to the painful process of grinding on the social wheel, by which jagged, dull-veined flints are smoothed and polished. Miss Jane could not tolerate ordinary people. Dempster was the only commonplace character in whom she had any interest. His visits to Snell House had been hitherto few and short, and she had never got accustomed to his genial stupidity. Ineptitude with Miss Jane was an almost unpardonable offence. She remembered, however, in the confusion to which he had reduced her, much necessity in the past for self-denial and longsuffering on his account, and, having a real regard for him, she calmed her troubled soul, saying to herself, 'He means well.' And then aloud: 'Now, Mr. Dempster, this is the low wall Muriel speaks of. This letter I found here.' She pushed aside some large ivy leaves in one of the forks of the elm, and deposited the letter in a deep, natural crevice--the bottom of which was quite invisible, although easily reached by the hand. 'How did you know to search there?' asked Dempster. 'Because I knew Muriel was in love.' 'Did she tell you?' 'No, no; this was the way of it.' Miss Jane was in her element. She leant against the bole of the tree and folded her arms across her belt. 'I observed that she had acquired a habit of going about with her eyebrows absurdly elevated, with a languishing look in her eyes, and with her lips just touching each other; but evidently ready at a moment's notice to open and sigh, or to compress and kiss. I knew very well what these signs meant in a girl of her age. Just raise your eyebrows, Mr. Dempster.' Mr. Dempster raised his eyebrows. 'No, no! not to the extent of expressing astonishment, but in this way. See.' Miss Jane suited the action to the word. 'When you raise your eyebrows that way your eyes can't help a languishing expression. Then this is the way her mouth was.' Miss Jane made a _moue_.