"The other evening," answered Roger, after yet a short pause, "happening to be in Tottenham Court Road, I walked for some distance behind a young woman carrying a brown beer-jug in her hand--for I sometimes amuse myself in the street by walking persistently behind some one, devising the unseen face in my mind, until the recognition of the same step following causes the person to look round at me, and give me the opportunity of comparing the two--I mean the one I had devised and the real one. When the young woman at length turned her head, it was only my astonishment that kept me from addressing her as Miss Clare. My surprise, however, gave me time to see how absurd it would have been. Presently she turned down a yard and disappeared." "Don't tell my cousin Judy," I said. "She would believe it _was_ Miss Clare." "There isn't much danger," he returned. "Even if I knew your cousin, I should not be likely to mention such an incident in her hearing." "Could it have been she?" said Percivale thoughtfully. "Absurd!" said Roger. "Miss Clare is a lady, wherever she may live." "I don't know," said his brother thoughtfully; "who can tell? It mightn't have been beer she was carrying." "I didn't say it was beer," returned Roger. "I only said it was a beer-jug,--one of those brown, squat, stone jugs,--the best for beer that I know, after all,--brown, you know, with a dash of gray." "Brown jug or not, I wish I could get a few sittings from her. She would make a lovely St. Cecilia," said my husband. "Brown jug and all?" asked Roger. "If only she were a little taller," I objected. "And had an aureole," said my husband. "But I might succeed in omitting the jug as well as in adding the aureole and another half-foot of stature, if only I could get that lovely countenance on the canvas,--so full of life and yet of repose." "Don't you think it a little hard?" I ventured to say. "I think so," said Roger. "I don't," said my husband. "I know what in it looks like hardness; but I think it comes of the repression of feeling." "You have studied her well for your opportunities," I said. "I have; and I am sure, whatever Mrs. Morley may say, that, if there be any truth at all in those reports, there is some satisfactory explanation of whatever has given rise to them. I wish we knew anybody else that knew her. Do try to find some one that does, Wynnie." "I don't know how to set about it," I said. "I should be only too glad." "I will try," said Roger. "Does she sing?" "I have heard Judy say she sang divinely; but the only occasion on which I met her--at their house, that time you couldn't go, Percivale--she was never asked to sing." "I suspect," remarked Roger, "it will turn out to be only that she's something of a Bohemian, like ourselves." "Thank you, Roger; but for my part, I don't consider myself a Bohemian at all," I said.