The new-comer was a young man with a somewhat high colour, dark hair and eyes, a full beardless face, and a coarse, animal mouth. He was well, even foppishly dressed, and bore the outward stamp of a person to whom money is not a subject of painful study or consideration. But, as Myles knew, he was not sterling coin. His manner, even of entering that room, was less than second-rate; confidence became a swagger; independence was metamorphosed into self-consciousness. The expression of his face was bold and vulgar. Perhaps no greater or more telling contrast could have been found, than that between the workman in his work-a-day dress, and the would-be dandy in his gloved, perfumed, over-dressed vulgarity. This person came forward; his eyes fell upon Myles; he removed them. A workman--a person not demanding his attention, one of the “fellahs” who came to the reading-room. Nevertheless, he seated himself at Myles’s table and drew a _Daily News_ towards him, without speaking and without removing his hat. Myles glanced at the young lady without letting her see that he did so; her eyes were fastened upon the page before her, but he had studied her expressions, and knew that she was not reading. ‘Now, I should like to know,’ speculated Myles inwardly, ‘what you may want here, Mr. Frederick Spenceley?’ He had recognised the man--the son of a rich manufacturer of Thanshope, who had earned his fortune as a Radical, and was living in state now as a Conservative and a supporter of the aristocracy, Church, State, and landed gentry interest. His son, as Myles was well aware, had assuredly not visited the reading-room for purposes of mental instruction. Myles apparently applied himself again to his book, but the argument had lost its charm for him. He had not known until now how lively was the interest he had taken in his graceful young neighbour. Placing his book so as to shield his face, but yet so that he could observe what was going on, he said to himself, ‘I’m glad I didn’t go away ten minutes ago.’ After bestowing a very short and scant need of attention upon the _Daily News_, Mr. Spenceley cast his eyes around him. Myles watched him, and saw the leisurely impudence of the stare with which he favoured the young lady, and his ears began to tingle. He--my poor Myles--was of a fiery temperament, could not endure to see even a ‘fine lady’ insulted without cause, and was dangerously ready to take up the cudgels for the unprotected or ill-used. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. Frederick Spenceley, leaning towards the girl. ‘Do you want that paper?’ He stretched his hand towards a newspaper which lay upon the table at which she sat, but he was looking at her with a stare, perhaps intended for one of gallant admiration, but which, from the unfortunate ‘nature of the beast,’ succeeded only in being impertinent. Without looking at him, she raised her elbow from the paper on which it had rested, and continued, or seemed to continue, her reading.