It was like a romance whose pages he was reading, and now a fresh leaf had been turned which he wished to decipher, and since he could not see Reinette he must seek help in another quarter, and he, who had always been noted for minding his own business better than any man in Merrivale, waited impatiently for evening, when he meant to begin the new chapter. CHAPTER XXX. TRYING TO READ THE PAGE. The night set in dark and stormy even for November and the wind howled dismally through the tall elms which grew upon the common, while both sleet and rain were falling pitilessly, when Mr. Beresford left his office, equipped for an evening call. He was going to see Margery La Rue, whom he found alone, as her mother had retired to her room with a toothache and swollen face. Margery let him in herself, and looked fully the surprise she felt when she saw who her visitor was. It was not so much that he should come that night as that he should come at all which astonished the young girl, who, with a woman’s intuition, had read the proud man pretty accurately, and guessed that persons like her, whose bread was earned by their own hands, had not much attraction for him. But it was his early training, which was at fault, and not the real heart of the man himself. His mother had seldom done so much for herself as to arrange her own hair, and when her immense fortune slipped away from her, and left her comparatively poor, and compelled her sons, two as noble boys as ever called a woman mother, to choose professions and care for themselves, she could not bear the change, and with a feeling that she would rather die than live and work, she died, and very few mourned for her. With such a mother and a long line of ancestry on her side, as proud and exclusive as herself, it is not strange that Mr. Beresford should have imbibed some notions not altogether consistent with democratic institutions. He thought a great deal of family and blood, and though he was always polite and courteous to Margery when they met, he had unconsciously made her feel the gulf between them, and she had good cause to gaze on him wonderingly as she opened the door, and held it open a moment as if expecting him to give her some message from Queenie, as he had done when Phil went away. Laughing good-humoredly as he stepped past her into the hall, he said: “I am coming in, you see, though I do not wonder that a call on such a wild night as this surprises you. But it is the weather which brings me here. I believe I have had the blues or something to-day, and need to talk to some one, and as Phil is gone, and Reinette is sick, I have come to call on you. I hope I am not unwelcome.” He was talking rather strangely, and not at all in a strain complimentary to Margery, who, nevertheless, passed it off pleasantly, and said, with her pretty accent, which struck Mr. Beresford with a degree of newness.