"I want to ask you something. May I?" She did not answer. As it had been from the first time she had ever seen him, so it was now with her; a confused sense of the necessity for caution in dealing with a man who had inspired in her such an unaccountable inclination to listen to what he chose to say. "What is it you wish to ask?" she inquired pleasantly. "It is this: are you _really_ surprised that I came? Are you, in your heart?" "Did I appear to be very much agitated? Or my heart, either, Mr. Berkley?" she asked with a careless laugh, conscious now of her quickening pulses. Outwardly calm, inwardly Irresolute, she faced him with a quiet smile of confidence. "Then you were not surprised that I came?" he insisted. "You did not wait to be asked. That surprised me a little." "I did wait. But you didn't ask me." "That seems to have made no difference to you," she retorted, laughing. "It made this difference. I seized upon the only excuse I had and came to pay my respects as a kinsman. Do you know that I am a relation?" "That is a very pretty compliment to us all, I think." "It is you who are kind in accepting me." "As a relative, I am very glad to----" "I came," he said, "to see _you_. And you know it." "But you _couldn't_ do that, uninvited! I had not asked you." "But--it's done," he said. She sat very still, considering him. Within her, subtle currents seemed to be contending once more, disturbing her equanimity. She said, sweetly: "I am not as offended as I ought to be. But I do not see why you should disregard convention with me." "I didn't mean it that way," he said, leaning forward. "I couldn't stand not seeing you. That was all. Convention is a pitiful thing--sometimes--" He hesitated, then fell to studying the carpet. She looked at him, silent in her uncertainty. His expression was grave, almost absent-minded. And again her troubled eyes rested on the disturbing symmetry of feature and figure in all the unconscious grace of repose; and in his immobility there seemed something even of nobility about him which she had not before noticed. She stole another glance at him. He remained very still, leaning forward, apparently quite oblivious of her. Then he came to himself with a quick smile, which she recognised as characteristic of all that disturbed her about this man--a smile in which there was humour, a little malice and self-sufficiency and--many, many things she did not try to analyse. "Don't you really want an unreliable servant?" he asked. His perverse humour perplexed her, but she smiled. "Don't you remember that I once asked you if you needed an able-bodied man?" he insisted. She nodded. "Well, I'm that man." She assented, smiling conventionally, not at all understanding. He laughed, too, thoroughly enjoying something.