He was silent,—­and as she resumed her reading of the “Morning Post” he had lent her, he leaned back in his seat and left her to herself.  But he was keenly interested,—­this young, small creature with her delicate, intelligent face and wistful blue-grey eyes was a new experience for him.  He was a well-seasoned journalist and man of letters,—­clever in his own line and not without touches of originality in his work—­but hardly brilliant or forceful enough to command the attention of the public to a large or successful issue.  He was, however, the right hand and chief power on the staff of one of the most influential of daily newspapers, whose proprietor would no more have thought of managing things without him than of going without a dinner, and from this post, which he had held for twenty years, he derived a sufficiently comfortable income.  In his profession he had seen all classes of humanity—­the wise and the ignorant,—­the conceited and the timid,—­men who considered themselves new Shakespeares in embryo,—­women in whom the unbounded vanity of a little surface cleverness was sufficient to place them beyond the pale of common respect,—­but he had never till now met a little country girl making her first journey to London who admitted reading “old French” and Elizabethan English as unconcernedly as she might have spoken of gathering apples or churning cream.  He determined not to lose sight of her, and to improve the acquaintance if he got the chance.  He heard her give a sudden sharp sigh as she read the “Morning Post,”—­she had turned to the middle of the newspaper where the events of the day were chronicled, and where a column of fashionable intelligence announced the ephemeral doings of the so-called “great” of the world.  Here one paragraph had caught and riveted her attention—­it ran thus—­“Lord and Lady Blythe have left town for Glen-Alpin, Inverness-shire, where they will entertain a large house-party to meet the Prime Minister.”

Her mother!—­It was difficult to believe that but a few hours ago this very Lady Blythe had offered to “adopt” her!—­“adopt” her own child and act a lie in the face of all the “society” she frequented,—­yet, strange and fantastic as it seemed, it was true!  Possibly she—­Innocent—­had she chosen, could have been taken to “Glen-Alpin, Inverness-shire!”—­she too might have met the Prime Minister!  She almost laughed at the thought of it!—­the paper shook in her hand.  Her “mother”!  Just then the old gentleman bent forward again and spoke to her.

“We are very near London now,” he said—­“Can I help you at the station to get your luggage?  You might find it confusing at first—­”

“Oh, thank you!” she murmured—­“But I have no luggage—­only this” —­and she pointed to the satchel beside her—­“I shall get on very well.”

Here she folded up the “Morning Post” and returned it to him with a pretty air of courtesy.  As he accepted it he smiled.