But here was somebody who was nobody, and who took hold of the handle of that door of her heart, which she had believed to be open, but which had evidently closed of itself, and gave it a sharp shake, without thinking of her father or any consequences whatever. She thought of it for a long time, turning it over and over with the greatest curiosity. It was a new thing in her experience. He wanted a great many of the qualities which she considered indispensable in a man. First and chiefest of all he was not clever. He knew nothing about books, he scarcely knew a picture when he saw one. Instead of hunting about in the _bric-à-brac_ shops as her father did, and as even little Paolo Thompson (whom Mr. Oliver called Paul-ó) was in the habit of doing, picking up wonderful things now and then, this stranger gazed with blank eyes at the treasures, and could not understand them. He was altogether a different kind of man from any she had ever seen, a homelier, duller sort of man; and yet he was not dull. The whole house was quiet and asleep when Rita suddenly sprang up from this long reverie, catching sight of her own big eyes in her looking-glass, and wondering at the wonder in them. She had got a new idea into her active little head. It was something novel and curious, and very amusing, but it did not seem to her at all necessary that it should ever come to anything. She wondered what he would say next, or how he would look, or what he would do. She was pleased on the whole to think that now perhaps she would have an opportunity of watching what a man looked like in such circumstances as these, which is a thing always interesting and, some people think, very amusing to see.