Miss Montressor did not know whether Bryan Duval had been quite so judicious and wise in the selection of certain other members of the company whom he proposed to take with him; she had her doubts on that point; but one must only work with the materials one has at hand. His fair Clara, in the character of critic and practical philosopher, afforded Mr. Dolby not a little amusement; and as he was not easily or often amused, he encouraged her to talk much more than usual. Mr. Dolby was not very communicative, nor did he, as a rule, like much talking--a defect in his disposition by no means agreeable to Miss Montressor's taste. He was rather given to absence of mind, and that is a tendency much disliked and resented by women, not unnaturally. Sometimes Mr. Dolby would fall into fits of musing, under whose influence he would rise and pace the room slowly to and fro, to and fro, with an utter abstraction in his face, which told Miss Montressor that his mind was far away, and that she was utterly banished from it, that she had no place at all, not even as a speck on the horizon, in his mental vision. During these fits of abstraction he did not talk to himself aloud, indeed, but his lips moved; and his knitted brows, and the inward look of his eyes, were plain indications that he was not merely absent in the direct sense of idle purposeless reverie, but that some subject of deep, concentrated, and all-absorbing interest was occupying all the approaches to the citadel of thought. Miss Montressor regarded this kind of thing as tiresome, a bore, and a mistake, a serious drawback to Mr. Dolby's excellence as a companion; but it inspired her with no further feeling, it wakened no curiosity. Business was almost as occult a phrase for Miss Montressor as it was for Helen Griswold, and she invariably concluded either that something had gone wrong in business or that Mr. Dolby was meditating some coup in business when he forgot to listen to her, left off talking to her, and walked up and down her pretty drawing-room, touching the chairs and tables unconsciously as he passed them with his finger tips, as she remembered having heard some one say Dr. Johnson used to touch the posts in Fleet-street. Miss Montressor would have been seriously annoyed, however, if Mr. Dolby had gone off into one of his fits of absence on the present occasion. Her own business was in the wind now, and she considered it worthy of his undivided attention. He did not try her patience on this point; he listened with genuine interest, which received a quite perceptible stimulus when Miss Montressor mentioned that all the arrangements and preparations were being greatly assisted and facilitated by her American friend, Mr. Foster. 'Foster!' said Mr. Dolby, stooping to pick up his paper-knife; 'the New York man, I suppose?'