He was seated on the corner of the table in the principals’ room, and rolling a cigarette. He had lighted the gas-stove. A very slim man of medium height and of no age, he might have been thirty-five with prematurely grizzled hair, or fifty with hair younger than the wrinkles round his grey eyes! Miss Grig had said or implied that she was younger than her brother, but the girls did not accept without reserve all that Miss Grig might say or imply. He had taken off his overcoat and now displayed a dinner-jacket and an adorably soft shirt. Lilian had never before seen him in evening-dress, for he did not come to the office at night, and nobody expected him to come to the office at night. He was wonderfully attractive in evening-dress, which he carried with the nonchalance of regular custom. So different from her father, who put on ceremonial attire about three times a year, and wore it with deplorable self-consciousness, as though it were a suit of armour! Mr. Grig was indeed a queer person to run a typewriting office. Lilian was aware that he had been to Winchester and Cambridge, and done all manner of unusual things before he lit on typewriting. "Any work come in to-night, Miss Share?" he demanded in the bland, kindly, careless, official tone which he always employed to the girls--a tone rendering the slightest familiarity impossible. "Anybody called?" Lilian knew that he was merely affecting an interest in the business, acting the rôle of managing proprietor. He had tired of the business long ago, and graciously left all the real power to his sister, who had no mind above typewriting. "Someone did come in just before you, Mr. Grig," Lilian replied, seizing her chance, and in a half-challenging tone she related the adventure with the night-watchman. "It was that that upset me, Mr. Grig. It might have been a burglar--I made sure it _was_. And me all alone----" "Quite! Quite!" he stopped her. "I can perfectly imagine how you must have felt. You haven’t got over it yet, even. Sit down. Sit down." He said no word of apology for his misjudgment of her, but his tone apologized. "Oh! I’m perfectly all right now, thank you." "Please!" He slipped off the table and pulled round Miss Grig’s chair for her. She obediently sat down, liking to be agreeable to him. He unlocked his own cupboard and brought out a decanter and a liqueur glass. "Drink this." "Please, what is it?" "Brandy. Poison." He smiled. She smiled, sipped, and coughed as the spirit burned her throat. "I can’t drink any more," she appealed. "That’s all right. That’s all right."