“Yes, sir,” replied the optician, with wriggling white fingers. “We make a special study of that. We endeavour to save the sight--to store it up, as it were, in--a middle life, for use in old age. You see, sir, the pupil of the eye--” Sir John held up a warning hand. “The pupil of the eye is your business, as I understand from the sign above your shop--at all events, it is not mine,” he said. “Just give me some glasses to suit my sight, and don't worry me with the pupil of the eye.” He turned towards the door, threw back his shoulders, and waited. “Spectacles, sir?” inquired the man meekly. “Spectacles, sir!” cried Sir John. “No, sir. Spectacles be damned! I want a pair of eyeglasses.” And these eyeglasses were affixed to the bridge of Sir John Meredith's nose, as he sat stiffly in the straight-backed chair. He was reading a scientific book which society had been pleased to read, mark, and learn, without inwardly digesting, as is the way of society with books. Sir John read a good deal--he had read more lately, perhaps, since entertainments and evening parties had fallen off so lamentably--and he made a point of keeping up with the mental progress of the age. His eyebrows were drawn down, as if the process of storing up eyesight for his old age was somewhat laborious. At times he turned and glanced over his shoulder impatiently at the lamp. The room was very still in its solid old-fashioned luxury. Although it was June a small wood fire burned in the grate, and the hiss of a piece of damp bark was the only sound within the four walls. From without, through the thick curtains, came at intervals the rumble of distant wheels. But it was just between times, and the fashionable world was at its dinner. Sir John had finished his, not because he dined earlier than the rest of the world--he could not have done that--but because a man dining by himself, with a butler and a footman to wait upon him, does not take very long over his meals. He was in full evening dress, of course, built up by his tailor, bewigged, perfumed, and cunningly aided by toilet-table deceptions. At times his weary old eyes wandered from the printed page to the smouldering fire, where a whole volume seemed to be written--it took so long to read. Then he would pull himself together, glance at the lamp, readjust the eyeglasses, and plunge resolutely into the book. He did not always read scientific books. He had a taste for travel and adventure--the Arctic regions, Asia, Siberia, and Africa--but Africa was all locked away in a lower drawer of the writing-table. He did not care for the servants to meddle with his books, he told himself. He did not tell anybody that he did not care to let the servants see him reading his books of travel in Africa.