"Go and tell her you've never done her justice, and cry," he suggested. "I'm going up to Imason's now, so you can have it all to yourselves." "I don't want to cry to-night," Sibylla objected, with a plain hint of mysterious causes for triumph. Jeremy picked up his cap, showing a studious disregard of any such indications. "You're going up the hill now? I shall sit up for you." "You'll sit up for me?" "Yes. Besides I don't feel at all sleepy to-night." "I shall when I come back." "I shan't want to talk." "Then what will you want? Why are you going to sit up?" "I've ever so many things to do." Jeremy's air was weary as he turned away from the inscrutable feminine. While mounting the hill he made up his mind to go to London as soon as he could. A man met men there. No air of emotion, no atmosphere of overstrained sentiment, hung, even for Jeremy's critical eye, round Grantley Imason's luxurious table and establishment. They suggested rather the ideal of comfort lovingly pursued, a comfort which lay not in gorgeousness or in mere expenditure, but in the delicate adjustment of means to ends and a careful exclusion of anything likely to disturb a dexterously achieved equipoise. Though Jeremy admired the absence of emotion, his rough vigorous nature was challenged at another point. He felt a touch of scorn that a man should take so much trouble to be comfortable, and should regard the achievement of his object as so meritorious a feat. In various ways everything, from the gymnastic apparatus in the hall to the leg-rest in front of the study fire, sought and subserved the ease and pleasure of the owner. That, no doubt, is what a house should be--just as a man should be well dressed. It is possible, however, to be too much of a dandy. Jeremy found an accusation of unmanliness making its way into his mind; he had to banish it by recalling that, though his host might be fond of elegant lounging, he was a keen sportsman too, and handled his gun and sat his horse with equal mastery. These virtues appealed to the English public schoolboy and to the amateur of Primitive Man alike, and saved Grantley from condemnation. But Jeremy's feelings escaped in an exclamation: "By Jove, you are snug here!" "I don't pretend to be an ascetic," laughed Grantley, as he stretched his legs out on the leg-rest. "Evidently." Grantley looked at him, smiling.