Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them. They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin? Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy, and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up. He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been since the arrival in his life of the twins. "Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last." "I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II., that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's Elliott." "Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she added, "I now have to allude to him as John." Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said, "think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday." "I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming. "It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It doesn't strike you as foolish." "On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm not _naturally_ quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded as a pardonable pride. "It doesn't strike you as even a little--well, a little improper."