Mrs. Barton stood up to go. "I've made one stipulation," she said. "Miss Macgregor will let you come to us every Wednesday afternoon to give Janie her lesson."
"Oh, how good you are!" Judith exclaimed. "I thought all that must be over."
"I wish I could have you altogether," Mrs. Barton said. "It would be charming for Janie, and for me too. But, unfortunately, that can't be." She had her hand on the handle of the half-open door. As she spoke there was a quick step on the stairs, and Percival Thorne went by. A slanting light from the window in the passage fell on his sombre, olive-tinted face with a curiously picturesque effect. An artist might have painted him, emerging thus from the dusky shadows. He carried himself with a defiant pride—was he not Judith's friend and champion?—and bowed, with a glance that was at once eager and earnest, when he caught sight of the young girl behind her friend's substantial figure. His strongly-marked courtesy was so evidently natural that it could not strike any one as an exaggeration of ordinary manners, but rather as the perfection of some other manners, no matter whether those of a nation or a time, or only his own. Mrs. Barton was startled and interested by the sudden apparition. The good lady was romantic in her tastes, and this was like a glimpse of a living novel. "Who was that?" she asked hurriedly.
"Mr. Thorne. He lodges here," said Judith.
"A friend of your brother's?"
"He was very good to my brother."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Barton. "My dear, he is very handsome."
Judith smiled.
"He is!" exclaimed her friend. "Don't say he isn't, for I sha'n't believe you mean it. He is very handsome—like a Spaniard, like a cavalier, like some one in a tragedy. Now, isn't he?"
Mrs. Barton's romantic feelings found no outlet in her daily round of household duties. Mr. Barton was good, but commonplace; so was Janie; and Mrs. Barton was quite conscious that there was nothing poetical or striking in her own appearance. But Miss Lisle, with her "great, grave griefful air," was fit to take a leading part in poem or drama, and here was a man worthy to play hero passing her on the staircase of a dingy lodging-house! Mrs. Barton built up a romance in a moment, and was quite impatient to bid Judith farewell, that she might work out the details as she walked along the street.