“Well, I think she looks tired,” said Hallin, with a little attempt at a smile, but turning away.  Everybody felt a certain tension, a certain danger, even in the simplest words, and Miss Hallin’s call to supper was very welcome.

The frugal meal went gaily.  The chattering Christchurch boy brought to it a breath of happy, careless life, to which the three others—­over-driven and over-pressed, all of them—­responded with a kind of eagerness.  Hallin especially delighted in him, and would have out all his budget—­his peacock’s pride at having been just put into the ’Varsity eleven, his cricket engagements for the summer, his rows with his dons, above all his lasting amazement that he should have just scraped through his Mods.

“I thought those Roman emperors would have done for me!” he declared, with a child’s complacency. “Brutes! I couldn’t remember them.  I learnt them up and down, backwards and forwards—­but it was no good; they nearly dished me!”

“Yet it comes back to me,” said Hallin, slily, “that when a certain person was once asked to name the winner of the Derby in some obscure year, he began at the beginning, and gave us all of them, from first to last, without a hitch.”

“The winner of the Derby!” said the lad, eagerly, bending forward with his hands on his knees; “why, I should rather think so!  That isn’t memory; that’s knowledge!—­Goodness! who’s this?”

The last remark was addressed sotto voce to Marcella.  Supper was just over, and the two guests, with Hallin, had returned to the window, while Miss Hallin, stoutly refusing their help, herself cleared the table and set all straight.

Hallin, hearing a knock, had gone to the door while Leven was speaking.  Four men came crowding in, all of them apparently well known both to Hallin and his sister.  The last two seemed to be workmen; the others were Bennett, Hallin’s old and tried friend among the Labour-leaders, and Nehemiah Wilkins, M.P.  Hallin introduced them all to Marcella and Leven; but the new-comers took little notice of any one but their host, and were soon seated about him discussing a matter already apparently familiar to them, and into which Hallin had thrown himself at once with that passionate directness which, in the social and speculative field, replaced his ordinary gentleness of manner.  He seemed to be in strong disagreement with the rest—­a disagreement which troubled himself and irritated them.

Marcella watched them with quick curiosity from the window where she was sitting, and would have liked to go forward to listen.  But Frank Leven turned suddenly round upon her with sparkling eyes.