‘Yes. Gravity, or Sedateness was his name for me--and it suited me.’ She had had to part from her good old friend, and that had cost her the pain which parting brings to those who know they will not meet again. In Paris, Adrienne had had lessons in democracy from a young universal genius, whose talents were too vast to stoop to any ordinary walk of life. He lived in a garret, and planned schemes of a perfect republic. Adrienne had not felt much grief on parting from him. A monstrous learned professor, who lived at Bonn, in a _Schlafrock_, slippers, and spectacles, had taught her a little store of Greek and Latin. But her greatest teacher had been a strange, absent-looking professor, in Berlin--a man of literature and philosophy, who had been very fond of her, and had given her freely of his very best. Her uncle, Mr. Blisset, looked upon this as a providential circumstance, for he found when she came to him, that he had no tyro to deal with, but one already instructed in philosophy and its terminology. Two years ago her father had died; and just before his death she had learnt for the first time that they possessed any relation in the world. She had received a letter to give to her uncle. She fulfilled the behest, and that was how she first met Mr. Blisset. ‘And what did he say? How did he receive you?’ asked Myles, eagerly. ‘I was chilled,’ said she, ‘as I sat opposite to him and saw his pale, impassive face, and watched how he raised his eyes now and then from that letter. He gave me no reply that night; told me nothing; did not intimate whether he were pleased or displeased to see me, but ordered a room to be prepared for me; and the next day he told me that my father had asked him in his letter to give me a shelter until I was able to find some employment by which I could support myself. My uncle said that if I could endure to live buried alive with an old man, and work hard at a sedentary employment, he would give me a home and pay me a certain sum every year. I accepted his proposal gratefully, and have never repented it; and I trust he never will, either.’ There spoke the true Adrienne Blisset. ‘And you are happy here?’ ‘As happy as I expect to be. It is a great thing not to be miserable.’ ‘That’s what our rulers appear to think we working-men ought to feel,’ said Myles, sardonically, his thoughts for the moment flying off at a tangent. ‘Are you bitter against your rulers?’ asked Adrienne, tranquilly.