One may have a dancing bear, but one is not forced to converse with him, she thinks, and she gives him a long, level look, wondering what animal he is really like. Gabrielle had likened him to a frog, but he is too bulky for that; a bear or a buffalo, she decides, and while she does so, he has come to the decision that no cage can be too gorgeous for his radiant Bird of Paradise, and he glances, but covertly, at her in a sort of maze at the curious freak of fortune that is going to bestow on him such a _rara avis_. He looks sideways at her sweet scarlet lips, and marvels what he has ever done in his prosy money-making life to make him worthy of their being yielded to him--not yet, no, _certainly_--not yet, he is aware of that, but perhaps, some day! He gloats with an elderly gentleman’s gloating on the supple young form and perfect face, and quite a delightful awe creeps over him at the very idea of the future presence of this flesh and blood divinity at his hearth and board. Nature has not been munificent to him in the way of looks. He has a broad, florid, rather flaccid physiognomy, and his proportions are not symmetrical, but taking him all round, he is not a bad sort, and he has a good heart. True it beats beneath a huge mountain of flesh, but, never mind, it beats all the same with a good deal of honest warmth. His feelings towards his fair autocrat are a mixture of profound admiration and profound gratitude--the last sentiment being born of the first. Gratitude is in fact an intensely tame word to express what he feels for Trixy’s munificent gift to him of herself. With all these feelings rife in his very broad breast, feelings that would gush forth eloquently in most men, Mr. Stubbs remains strictly practical and common-place, and fortunately his wife elect is better able to sympathise with him as he is than if Cupid spoke from his lips in flowers of rhetoric. “And the furniture? From Jackson and Graham’s, I suppose?” he asks deprecatingly, as if it was _her_ money and not his that was to pay for it. “From Jackson and Graham’s of course! You surely are not thinking of going to Tottenham Court Road, Mr. Stubbs?” Trixy says raspily, with a little sniff of her Greek nose. “No, no! _of course_ not!” he murmurs alarmed. “Remember, I cannot have any hangings but _blue_--blue suits my complexion, you know; not _dark_ blue, mind, but _bleu de ciel_!” “Blue, certainly,” he answers humbly, much more humbly probably than Jackson and Graham’s foreman would. “And Mr. Stubbs, pray don’t forget that I hate anything modern. I like everything _old_, in _furniture_ I mean!” she says, warming up with her subject. “Chippendale and all that sort of thing.” “Florid carving you would like of course?” “Florid! Horrid! Plain chairs, with shields at the back for the----” She stops suddenly, while a look of disappointment and dismay creeps over her face.