Miss Richardia’s quiet laugh fitted the incongruity. But when she spoke again it was of the business affair. “You are at work on the Ocoee?” she inquired. “Yes, indeed! I am going to make a spoon or spoil a perfectly good horn. You must all come over and see my test-drilling outfit when we get it going.” “Is it your machine that we can see over beyond the glen? I wonder if you could make me understand what you are going to do?” she said, with interest real or so skilfully feigned that Tregarvon could not distinguish the difference. He expressed himself as being very willing to try; did try at some considerable length. And Miss Birrell, notwithstanding an air of abstraction that seemed to come and go, appeared to grasp the mechanical details. “You have no doubt that you will succeed? It will be fine to prove to everybody that all that was needed was for some one to come from the other world--your world--to show them how to do it.” Tregarvon winced, seeing now the pitfall into which he had suffered himself to be led. “Is that the impression I’ve been giving you?” he asked. “Do I advertise myself as such a blooming bounder as that would signify?” “Forgive me,” she said, with a little laugh which might have meant anything from veiled ridicule to a keen appreciation of a palpable hit. “I suspect it is the way of your world to be austerely sufficient unto itself. You may contradict me if I am wrong.” “Nonsense!” he exclaimed generously. “You are as much of my world as I am.” “Oh, no!” she objected: “we are only poor outlanders. I was called that once, in Boston; not spitefully, of course, but rather as an excuse for my shortcomings, I fancy.” “Whoever said it was a snob,” he exploded. “Boston is horribly provincial, at times, you know.” “And Philadelphia never is?” “I shouldn’t dare to make the claim too broad. But I am sure we recognize the fact that there is an America west of the Alleghenies--and south of Mason and Dixon’s line.” “That is charitable, at least,” she conceded. “Still, you think it is left for you to demonstrate success where others have failed--in the Ocoee undertaking.” “I hadn’t thought of it in that way,” he answered, with due modesty. “Indeed, I know little or nothing about the early history of the mine. My father became interested in it some years before he died, and I think he always regarded it as a dead loss. But he bought the stock, or rather, I should say, had it forced upon him, when it was pretty cheap, and----” “Yes,” she interrupted, a little forbiddingly, he thought; and then she began to speak of other things as if groping for a more congenial common ground. It was found when Tregarvon confessed to an amiable weakness for good music. “I’ll play for you if you wish,” she said almost abruptly; and it was an hour later when Carfax entered the music-room to break the spell which Miss Richardia had woven about her single listener.