impossible to the human being. Dr. Brayle, I soon perceived, lent
himself to this attitude, and I did not like the covert gleam of his
mahogany-coloured eyes as he glanced rapidly from father to daughter
in the pauses of conversation, watching them as narrowly as a cat
might watch a couple of unwary mice. The secretary, Mr. Swinton, was
a pale, precise-looking young man with a somewhat servile demeanour,
under which he concealed an inordinately good opinion of himself.
His ideas were centred in and bounded by the art of stenography,--he
was an adept in shorthand and typewriting, could jot down, I forget
how many crowds of jostling words a minute, and never made a
mistake. He was a clock-work model of punctuality and dispatch, of
respectfulness and obedience,--but he was no more than a machine,--
he could not be moved to a spontaneous utterance or a spontaneous
smile, unless both smile and utterance were the result of some
pleasantness affecting himself. Neither Dr. Brayle nor Mr. Swinton
were men whom one could positively like or dislike,--they simply had
the power of creating an atmosphere in which my spirit found itself
swimming like a gold-fish in a bowl, wondering how it got in and how
it could get out.

As I sat rather silently at table I felt, rather than saw, Dr.
Brayle regarding me with a kind of perplexed curiosity. I was as
fully aware of his sensations as of my own,--I knew that my presence
irritated him, though he was not clever enough to explain even to
himself the cause of his irritation. So far as Mr. Swinton was
concerned, he was comfortably wrapped up in a pachydermatous hide of
self-appreciation, so that he thought nothing about me one way or
the other except as a guest of his patrons, and one therefore to
whom he was bound to be civil. But with Dr. Brayle it was otherwise.
I was a puzzle to him, and--after a brief study of me--an annoyance.