She followed her protector on tip toe, averting her eyes from the indignant glances that she was sure were being levelled at her. One lean old monk was scowling, but he was really thinking of something else. Then there was a dreadful fat negro, like Othello turned scholar, who rolled his eyes. Fenella could not help peeping at the leaves he was turning over, to confirm an unscientific conviction of her own, that the black did really come off sometimes.
Her guide stopped at an empty place, arranged her books neatly upon the flat leather-covered desk, pulled out a cane-seated chair on casters, and, bowing slightly, sat down in the next place and began to read one of a number of manuscript leaves with which it was strewn. She divested herself of gloves and furs, and commenced turning the pages of one of her books gingerly. Occasionally, she put her finger to her mouth, and then, remembering where she was, stopped with a shudder, as at danger escaped.
The man who had helped her was writing busily on a thick paper pad. When he had reached the bottom of each page, he blotted it, numbered it in the top right-hand corner, and added it carelessly to an untidy pile at his left hand. Sometimes, before tearing it off, he read it over, apparently without enthusiasm, erased words, and sometimes whole sentences, with impatient curly "twiddles" of his quill pen, wrote words in between the lines and added various cabalistic signs and letters in the margin. He was very much occupied, and Fenella, whom no book had ever absorbed, saw that she might watch him covertly and safely.
So this was the way books were written! She wondered who he was. Not Bernard Shaw—his hair was too short. Nor Rider Haggard—his face was too narrow. She could not think of any other writer with a beard. She considered him good-looking—in a strange way. She never would have, I will not say looked, but wanted to look after him in the street, still in a way she could not define, it was nice to be sitting next him. She liked his leanness and dryness. She hated fat men whose sleek hair seemed to be soaking up superabundant moisture from their bodies. Then, his beard was trimmed so closely to his cheek it was hard to say where it began, and his moustache was brushed out of the way once and for all. He didn't keep "twiddling" it. Yes; it would be quite safe to sit opposite while he ate soup.
There was a man quite like him on the very page before her.... Ah! Yes. That was what he wanted. A big ruff showing the hairy throat, and a little cloak, swung from his shoulders, and big puffy—whatever they called them—nearly to his knees, and a long rapier sticking up in the air—how awkward on staircases though—but not a silly little toque like that, stuck on one side, and not—oh, not earrings in his ears. Who was it? "Duc de Guise." What a pity she had forgotten (forgotten!) all her French. Yes; that was what was the matter with him, she decided. His good looks were simply out of fashion. She looked backward and forward from the book to his face, from his face to the book, two or three times. Suddenly she became aware he was looking straight at her.
"Oh! help!"
"Anything I can do?" asked the stranger helpfully, in a low voice that was far less obtrusive than any whisper.
"C-could you translate this little bit for me, please? I'm no good at French," Fenella stammered, pushing her book toward him.
"Which little bit?"
She indicated a paragraph at random and as far from the picture as possible. She caught her breath at her audacity. "Forward minx, I am." She hoped he wouldn't hang over her shoulder to translate, like handsome Mr. Curzon, the drawing master at Sharland, heedless, or perhaps not heedless, of the burning cheek so near his own, and the suppressed titters of "the girls."