“We have all heard that, and let us hope, Miss Trevor, that the votaries of society are rewarded for their devotions. You don’t share the _culte_?” he said. “I! I am not _out_, and besides I am in mourning,” said Lucy, looking at her crape. “I beg your pardon; won’t you take your seat again, and let me feel my sins forgiven? Did I interrupt your reading? A new novel is much more interesting than an old--or, let us say, a middle-aged savage.” Sir Thomas Randolph saw Lucy look at him when he said this: already did she want to make sure that the savage was not more than middle-aged? He thought so, and he was satisfied. “It is not that I care for the novel; I had not begun it yet. It is written,” said Lucy, trying her new subject, “by a--gentleman we know; but, perhaps, as you have just come home, you may want dinner, or something, Mr.-- I mean Sir Thomas?” “You have heard of me, I see.” “Oh, yes; Lady Randolph so often speaks of you; but I am not much used to people with titles,” Lucy said. “Do you call mine a title? not much of that. We are commoners, you know; and I hear that whenever there is anything very wicked wanted in a novel, it is always found in a baronet; that is hard upon us, Miss Trevor. I wonder if there is a wicked baronet in the novel you have got there.” “I have not read it yet; it is written,” said Lucy, hesitating, “by a gentleman we know. Lady Randolph is going to speak to everybody about it, and we hope it will be very successful.” Lucy could not keep herself from showing a little consciousness. He took it up and she was very much alarmed lest he should see the dedication. She had never thought it would affect her, yet here, already, she had quite entered into Lady Randolph’s feelings. Fortunately he did not see it, though he turned over the volume in his large hands. He was large, all over, as different as it was possible to conceive from Bertie, who was slight and dainty, almost like a girl. Lucy was not sure that she had ever seen a man before so near, or spoken to one of this kind. He was so unlike the other people of her acquaintance that she could not help giving curious looks at him under the shade of the lamp. He did not keep still for a moment, but threw his bigness about so that it filled the room, sometimes getting up and walking up and down, taking up the chairs as if they were toys. He was a creature of a new species. She did not feel toward him as Miranda did to Ferdinand, who was probably an elegant stripling of the Bertie kind, but she was interested in the new being, who was not beautiful; he was so unlike anything she had ever seen before. CHAPTER XXIV. SIR TOM.