There had been something a little hurried and abrupt in her manner of receiving me, when I came in.  When we began to read, her attention wandered incessantly; she looked round several times towards the door.  Mr. Sherwin walked about the room without intermission, except when he once paused on his restless course, to tell me that Mr. Mannion was coming that evening; and that he hoped I should have no objection to be introduced to a person who was “quite like one of the family, and well enough read to be sure to please a great reader like me.”  I asked myself rather impatiently, who was this Mr. Mannion, that his arrival at his employer’s house should make a sensation?  When I whispered something of this to Margaret, she smiled rather uneasily, and said nothing.

At last the bell was rung.  Margaret started a little at the sound.  Mr. Sherwin sat down; composing himself into rather an elaborate attitude—­the door opened, and Mr. Mannion came in.

Mr. Sherwin received his clerk with the assumed superiority of the master in his words; but his tones and manner flatly contradicted them.  Margaret rose hastily, and then as hastily sat down again, while the visitor very respectfully took her hand, and made the usual inquiries.  After this, he was introduced to me; and then Margaret was sent away to summon her mother down stairs.  While she was out of the room, there was nothing to distract my attention from Mr. Mannion.  I looked at him with a curiosity and interest, Which I could hardly account for at first.

If extraordinary regularity of feature were alone sufficient to make a handsome man, then this confidential clerk of Mr. Sherwin’s was assuredly one of the handsomest men I ever beheld.  Viewed separately from the head (which was rather large, both in front and behind) his face exhibited, throughout, an almost perfect symmetry of proportion.  His bald forehead was smooth and massive as marble; his high brow and thin eyelids had the firmness and immobility of marble, and seemed as cold; his delicately-formed lips, when he was not speaking, closed habitually, as changelessly still as if no breath of life ever passed them.  There was not a wrinkle or line anywhere on his face.  But for the baldness in front, and the greyness of the hair at the back and sides of his head, it would have been impossible from his appearance to have guessed his age, even within ten years of what it really was.

Such was his countenance in point of form; but in that which is the outward assertion of our immortality—­in expression—­it was, as I now beheld it, an utter void.  Never had I before seen any human face which baffled all inquiry like his.  No mask could have been made expressionless enough to resemble it; and yet it looked like a mask.  It told you nothing of his thoughts, when he spoke:  nothing of his disposition, when he was silent.  His cold grey eyes gave you no help in trying to study him.  They never varied from the steady, straightforward