Percival returned her glance with a grave scorn which she hardly understood. "My dinner is ready?" he said. "Thank you, Miss Bryant." And Lydia flounced out of the room, half indignant, half sorrowful: "_He_ didn't know--that's true. But _she_ knows what she's after, very well. Don't tell me!" To Lydia, at this moment, it seemed as if every girl must be seeking what she sought. "And I call it very bold of her to come poking herself where she isn't wanted--running after a young man. I'd be ashamed." A longing to scratch Miss Lisle's face was mixed with a longing to have a good cry, for she was honestly suffering the pangs of unrequited love. It is true that it was not for the first time. The curl, the earrings, the songs, the _Language of Flowers_, had done duty more than once before. But wounds may be painful without being deep, although the fact of these former healings might prevent all fear of any fatal ending to this later love. Lydia was very unhappy as she went down stairs, though if another hero could be found she was perhaps half conscious that the melancholy part of her present love-story might be somewhat abridged. The streets seemed changed to Percival as he went back to his work. Their ugliness was as bare and as repulsive as ever, but he understood now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude so many days. Above the dull and miry ways were the beauty of her gray-blue eyes and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings; for what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, and her father had swindled him out of his money. Never had his work seemed so tedious, and never had he hurried so quickly to Bellevue street as he did when it was over. The door of No. 13 stood open, and young Lisle stood on the threshold. There was no mistaking him. His face had changed from the beautiful chorister type of two or three years earlier, but Percival thought him handsomer than ever. He ceased his soft whistling and held out his hand: "Thorne! At last! I was looking out for you the other way." Thorne could hardly find time to greet him before he questioned eagerly, "You have really taken the rooms here?" "Really and truly. What's wrong? Anything against the landlady?" "No," said Percival. "She's honest enough, and fairly obliging, and all the rest of it. But then your sister is not coming here to live with you, as they told me? That was a mistake?" "Not a bit of it. She's coming: in fact, she's here." "In Bellevue street?" Percival looked up and down the dreary thoroughfare. "But, Lisle, what a place to bring her to!"