‘Yes, Ned is like a girl for delicacy,’ said Myles, a sarcastic flavour in his voice. ‘Well, Miss Blisset, I will try hard to please you. Next week there’s a fellow coming that I _have_ a contempt for, if I ever had for any one.’ ‘Who may that be?’ ‘Mr. Sebastian Mallory, our so-called _master_.’ A pause. Then a hesitating, ‘In-deed!’ from her, the intonation of which Myles did not remark. ‘So I’ll try to be polite to him, if our paths cross--which I hope they won’t.’ ‘Perhaps they may not. But now do try,’ said she. ‘You may find it easier than you think.’ They parted at the wicket, and Myles went home, to find Edmund gone to bed, and to sit up himself, reading ‘My Beautiful Lady,’ which Adrienne had lent to Edmund, never supposing that Myles would look at it, or that he would take any interest in it if he did. But he pored over it, and his heart-strings trembled to the poet’s notes: it was he himself, his own thoughts put into poetry as the lover waited his lady’s coming. And as for the end, Myles read it differently; to please himself, he allowed common sense to step in--Adrienne was not consumptive. CHAPTER XII. MR. MALLORY’S POLITICS. ‘_Philinte._--Mais on entend les gens au moins sans se fâcher. _Alceste._--Moi, je veux me fâcher, et ne veux point entendre.’ _Le Misanthrope._ During the following forenoon Myles sat alone in the outer office, employed exactly as he had been on the day of Mrs. Mallory’s visit, weeks before. Wilson was going his usual round in the works, and Mr. Sutcliffe, the manager, was out. Pausing at the end of a column of figures, he raised his eyes and saw coming down the street something which caused him to open his eyes in surprise, though surprise was not his usual expression. It was a very high and very swell phaeton, with a pair of magnificent bays, which danced along the street, as if its shabby, clog-worn stones caused much distress to their aristocratic hoofs. The driver of this (in Thanshope) unique conveyance was a young man in light grey clothes and a round cloth cap--no English cap: indeed there was, at least to the uninitiated Thanshope eye, something un-English in his whole appearance. He was, however, master of his cattle, as even Myles could see. Beside him sat a slight, dark boy, with a plain, queer, but attractive face; and behind was a very correct-looking groom. ‘Who on earth is that chap?’ was Myles’s first very natural thought, as he forgot his work, and gazed in the blissfulness of ignorance at the vision. The next moment he could have bitten off his tongue could he have had the feeling that he had not bestowed a second glance upon the whole affair, for the dancing bays came sidling down the street, and the driver pulled them up before that very office door; moreover, he had caught sight of Myles staring at him, and had given him in return a lazy look from a pair of rather sleepy eyes.