Brian had seen Norah several times with a burden he thought too heavy for her to carry, and he had gallantly taken the basket from her hand and carried it for her.
Those were the days when there was money to pay for marketings, and before the accident happened which had laid her father low. But Brian was not a fair-weather friend, and that meat-pie and bun were not the first that he had bought out of his pocket-money for the now forlorn child.
He was running away to the rehearsal for next Sunday's music, when he jostled against Leslie Travers, who was coming out of the Pump Room.
Brian came to a dead stop, and said respectfully:
"Sir, there is a man and a little girl in great want in Crown Alley; the child was at Mr. Herschel's door last night."
"This is a lucky chance," Leslie Travers said, "for I am looking for Brian Bellis. Are you Brian Bellis? I know your face amongst the singers in the Octagon"--adding to himself, "a face not likely to forget."
It was lighted now with the fire of enthusiasm, as he said:
"Oh! sir; yes, I am Brian Bellis, and I can show you the way to Crown Alley; not now, for I have to be at the rehearsal. But, sir, I will come to the Pump Room this afternoon, and I will go with you then. I wish I could stay now, but I dare not. Mr. Herschel never overlooks absence from a rehearsal for Sunday."
"Very good; I will be there. Come to the lobby about four, and you will find me."
Lady Betty was of course there, laying siege to the young Lord Basingstoke, and laughing her senseless little laugh, and flirting her fan as she lounged on a sofa, with the young man leaning over her.
Sir Maxwell Danby had had a twinge of gout, and was in an ill temper. He did not care two straws for Lady Betty, but he did not like to see his territory invaded, knowing, too, that a peer weighed heavily in the balance against a baronet.
Griselda had rebuffed him too decidedly for him to risk another public manifestation of her repugnance to him, and he watched her with his small close-set eyes with anything but a benign expression.
Griselda was surrounded by a mother and two smart, gawky daughters, who were strangers at Bath, and were of the veritable type of "country-cousins," which was so distinct a type in the society of those days. Now refinement, or what resembles it, has penetrated into country towns and villages, and the farmers' wives and daughters of to-day are more successful in presenting themselves in what is called "good society," than were the squires' and small landed proprietors' families when "the country" districts were separated by impassable roads from frequent intercourse with the gay world beyond.