artists, he observed all things so quietly that you rarely
discovered that he was observing at all.

"Dear me!" people would say, "Is Mark Shrewsbury really here? Which
is he? I don't see any one at all like my idea of a novelist."

"There he is--that man in spectacles," would be the reply.

And really the spectacles were the only noteworthy thing about him.

Mrs. Selldon, who had seen several authors and authoresses in her
time, and knew that they were as a rule most ordinary, hum-drum kind
of people, was quite prepared for her fate. She remembered her
astonishment as a girl when, having laughed and cried at the play,
and taken the chief actor as her ideal hero, she had had him pointed
out to her one day in Regent Street, and found him to be a most
commonplace-looking man, the very last person one would have
supposed capable of stirring the hearts of a great audience.

Meanwhile dinner progressed, and Mrs. Selldon talked to an empty-
headed but loquacious man on her left, and racked her brains for
something to say to the alarmingly silent author on her right. She
remembered hearing that Charles Dickens would often sit silent
through the whole of dinner, observing quietly those about him, but
that at dessert he would suddenly come to life and keep the whole
table in roars of laughter. She feared that Mr. Shrewsbury meant to
imitate the great novelist in the first particular, but was scarcely
likely to follow his example in the last. At length she asked him
what he thought of the cathedral, and a few tepid remarks followed.