Had circumstance, or his own inclination, led him out farther into the world, he might have been noticeable there, for he had very great and varied acquirements---more acquirements perhaps, than originalities. He had never written a book, but he had read almost every book that ever was written--or, at least, such was the belief current in Avonsbridge. In his study he was literally entombed in books---volumes in all languages--and Avonsbridge supposed him able to read them all. How far this was a popular superstition, and to what length his learning went, it is impossible to say. But nobody ever came quite to the end of it. He was a silent, modest man, who never spoke much of what he knew, or of himself in any wise. His strongest outward characteristic was quietness, both of manner, speech, motions, springing, it appeared, out of a corresponding quietness of soul. Whether it had been born with him, or through what storms of human passion and suffering he had attained to this permanent central calm, who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had never been dropped yet. As he sat, his grave eyes fixed on the ground, and his mouth covered by the long thin brown hand--the sort of hand you see in mediaeval portraits of student-gentlemen--nothing of him was discernible except the gentleman and the student. Not though he sat waiting for his "two-hours' wife," whom undoubtedly he had married for love--pure love--the only reason for which anyone, man or woman, old or young, ought to dare to marry. That he could feel as very few have the power to feel, no one who was any judge of physiognomy could doubt for a moment; yet he sat perfectly quiet--the quietness of a man accustomed to something safer and higher than self-suppression--self-control. When Mr. Ferguson came in, he rose and began to speak about the weather and local topics as men do speak to one another--and better that they should!--even at such crises as weddings or funerals. And Christian his wife?