And he had no faith in his power so to change her.

The next day was Thursday.  This and Sunday were his lecture days; his class met at half-past eight.  Precisely at that hour he reached a small doorway in High Street, Lambeth, and ascended a flight of stairs to a room which he had furnished as he deemed most suitable.  Several rows of school-desks faced a high desk at which he stood to lecture.  The walls were washed in distemper, the boarding of the floor was uncovered, the two windows were hidden with plain shutters.  The room had formerly been used for purposes of storage by a glass and china merchant; below was the workshop of a saddler, which explained the pervading odour of leather.

A little group of men stood in conversation near the fire; on Egremont’s appearance they seated themselves at the desks, each producing a note-book which he laid open before him.  Thus ranged they were seen to be eight in number.  Out of fourteen to whom invitations were addressed, nine had presented themselves at the preliminary meeting; one, we know, had since proved unfaithful.  Egremont looked round for Ackroyd on entering, but the young man was not here.

On the front bench were two men whom as yet you know only by name.  Mr. Bower was clearly distinguishable by his personal importance and the ennui, not to be disguised, with which he listened to the opening sentences of the lecture.  He leaned against the desk behind him, and carefully sharpened the point of his pencil.  He was a large man with a spade-shaped beard; his forehead was narrow, and owed its appearance of height to incipient baldness; his eyes were small and shrewd.  He habitually donned his suit of black for these meetings.  At the works, where he held a foreman’s position, he was in good repute:  for years he had proved himself skilful, steady, abundantly respectful to his employers.  In private life he enjoyed the fame of a petty capitalist; since his marriage, thirty years ago, he and his wife had made it the end of their existence to put by money, with the result that his obsequiousness when at work was balanced by the blustering independence of his leisure hours.  The man was a fair instance of the way in which prosperity affects the average proletarian; all his better qualities—­honesty, perseverance, sobriety—­took an ignoble colour from the essential vulgarity of his nature, which would never have so offensively declared itself if ill fortune had kept him anxious about his daily bread.  Formerly Egremont had been impressed by his intelligent manner; closer observation had proved to him of how little worth this intelligence was, in its subordination to a paltry character.  Bower regarded himself as the originator of this course of lectures; through all his obsequiousness it was easy to see that he deemed his co-operation indispensable to the success of the project.  At first, as was natural, Egremont had sometimes seemed to address words specially to him; of late he had purposely avoided doing so, and Bower began to feel that his services lacked recognition.