Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few.  Her life was rather a dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be.  At one time she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little too fine for the stage.  The positive and enduring joys of her life were that she lived in London—­for which she had the kind of passion that some people have for the Earth-Mother—­and loved beauty as some women love religion.  She had been loved many times, but never quite as she needed, as she demanded, to be loved.  Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, she was what we call “modern” to the tips of her beautiful fingers; that is, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancient charms.  At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful and highly dangerous.

Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of the street, exclaimed, “Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!” rising as he spoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously rich and mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time; and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room.

As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous “Oh!” of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given Londonderry an “interesting face,” as we have heard, but missed all the rest—­“all the rest” of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various commands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin.  These were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic accompaniment of small talk.

Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, but introduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to the little study in 3 Zion Place.

Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of cries of sympathetic delight.  “Why, you have got all the books I ever want to read again!” she exclaimed.  “What wonderful people you are!  How have you done it—­in Zion Place?”

“I suppose the books must have been blown here,” answered Theophil, gaily, “on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange.”

“Yes,” said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as the three leaned forward looking at the shelves, “for if we seem wonderful people to you, what must you seem to us—­here, as you may well say, in Zion Place?”

“What does she remind you of?” said Jenny presently, with candid admiration.  “I know!  Why, of course, she just is the very woman.  Wait—­I’ll go and fetch it;” and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for a moment or two alone,—­a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was the first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone.