"I'd lay long odds she follows up the idea," said Lyster to himself, as he sat down on the twisted roots of an old elm and lit a cheroot. "She's a fine creature," he added, looking after her; "something in the Cheetah line,--fine and swervy and supple, and as clever as--as old boots. How awfully old I'm growing! I should have gone mad after such a girl as that once; and now--she doesn't cause me the slightest emotion. There's that little Townshend, now,--ah, that's quite another matter!" Had Barbara really any notion of following out Lyster's sportive notion, and of playing Vivien to an aged Merlin? of winning from his goddess Study a man whose whole life had been passed at her shrine, and of lighting with as much fire as yet remained to him eyes dimmed with midnight researches? I know not. But I do know that she spent more time that evening over her toilet than she had done during her stay at the Grange, and that she never looked lovelier than in her rich blue dinner-dress, trimmed with black lace, and with a piece of velvet passing through her hair, and coquettishly fastened at one side by a single splendid turquoise. Perhaps some thought of her conversation with Lyster flitted across her brain; for she smiled saucily as she stepped down the wide old staircase, and she had hardly composed her countenance by the time she had passed into the drawing-room, where the party was assembled. The room was lighted only by the flickering blaze of a wood-fire (for the evenings were already chilly), and she could only indistinctly make out that the gentleman whom Sir Marmaduke introduced as "Professor Churchill," and who was to take her in to dinner, was tall, had no spectacles, and was apparently not so old as she had anticipated. But when she looked at him in the full light of the dining-room, she nearly uttered an exclamation of surprise when she saw, as the embodiment of her intended Merlin, a man of six feet in height, about thirty years of age, with short wavy brown hair, hazel eyes, a crisp dark beard, and a genial, good-humoured, sensible expression. All this she took in in covert glances; and so astonished was she, that after a few commonplaces she could not resist saying, "And are you really a professor, Mr. Churchill?" He laughed heartily--a clear, ringing, jolly laugh--as he replied, "Well, I am,--at least I stand so honoured on the books of old Leipzig University, and our good host here always will insist on dubbing me with my full title. But I don't generally sport it. I always think of dancing, or calisthenics, or deportment,--Turveydrop, you know,--in connexion with the professorship. I can't help noticing that you look astonished, Miss Lexden; I trust I haven't rudely put to flight any preconceived notions of yours as to my dignity?" "No--at least--well, I will frankly own my notions were different."