‘She’s certainly different from other people,’ he said to himself: and in that matter he was right, if he meant that she was not like the ordinary Thanshope lady. But the ordinary Thanshope lady had not been brought up as Adrienne Blisset had been, and Myles did not know then what patient struggles with sorrow and poverty and adverse circumstances had made her what she was. At one-and-twenty she had lived in many lands, and her mind had come in contact with many other minds, often minds of a far from common order. Very few English girls in her class have had that experience at that age--nor would those who wish a girl to be innocent and happy desire such experience for her, if it had to be paid for with such a heavy guerdon of sorrow and suffering as Adrienne had paid for hers. Myles knew nothing of that, he only saw the difference. He felt a curiosity about her, blended with some admiration. He admired her grace, her spirit, her sweet voice, her quick intelligence; and he thought a great deal about her as he walked home, and wondered if he should see her again to-morrow--if she would be as gracious as she had been to-night; he thought of Frederick Spenceley, and classed him in his mind with ‘Mallory and that lot,’ and was glad, quite revengefully glad, that he had been able to treat him as he had done, and that was all. Perfectly unexpectant, unconscious, unaware of the web which circumstances, past, present, and to come, were weaving about his head, he paced the well-known streets--a son of toil, the descendant of generations of sons of toil, but with a whole world dormant in him, or rather nascent--a whole realm of suffering: love, hope, grandeur, baseness, which this night had first stirred into a premonitory natal activity. Saturday morning came, and work, and the business of life; Saturday afternoon, and holiday. Myles and Mary walked home together about two o’clock; and his sister looked at him more than once, as his head and his eyes turned quickly from one side to the other, so often that at last she said, ‘Why, Myles, dost expect to see some one thou knows?’ ‘Me--no!’ said he, hastily, and with a forced laugh. He had been half unconsciously looking for Adrienne, but in vain. In the evening he repaired to the reading-room as usual. He went straight to his seat in the window; but she was not there, so he picked up the _Westminster_, which no one had disturbed since last night, and resumed the article on the governing classes. But he could not, to use his own expression, ‘fasten to it,’ until he heard the soft opening and closing of the swing-door in the background, and the faint sound, almost imperceptible, of a girl’s light footfall and undulating dress, came nearer and nearer. Then, when he looked up, she was there, looking just the same as usual--which was surprising, after all his dreamy thoughts about her.