"My father told me of his visit to your place," she said. "He interested me very much. I should like to see the Works, if you admit visitors. I know nothing of such things." "Any time you choose to come," he answered, "I'll show you round--and be glad to do it. It's a pretty big place of the kind." He was glad she had chosen this subject. If she would only go on, it would not be so bad. He would be in his own groove. And she did go on. "I've seen very little of Broxton," she proceeded. "I spent a few weeks here before going abroad again with my father, and I cannot say I have been very fond of it. I do not like England, and on the Continent one hears unpleasant things of English manufacturing towns. I think," smiling a little for the first time, "that one always associates them with 'strikes' and squalid people." "There is not much danger of strikes here," he replied. "I give my chaps fair play and let 'em know who's master." "But they have radical clubs," she said, "and talk politics and get angry when they are not sober. I've heard that much already." "They don't talk 'em in _my_ place," he answered, dogmatically. He was not quite sure whether it relieved him or not when Ffrench entered at this moment and interrupted them. He was more at his ease with Ffrench, and yet he felt himself at a disadvantage still. He scarcely knew how the night passed. A feverish unrest was upon him. Sometimes he hardly heard what his entertainer said, and Mr. Ffrench was in one of his most voluble and diffuse moods. He displayed his knowledge of trade and mechanics with gentlemanly ostentation; he talked of "Trades' Unions" and the master's difficulties; he introduced manufacturer's politics and expatiated on Continental weaknesses. He weighed the question of demand and supply and touched on "protective tariff." "Blast him," said Haworth, growing bitter mentally, "he thinks I'm up to naught else, and he's right." As her father talked Miss Ffrench joined in but seldom. She listened and looked on in a manner of which Haworth was conscious from first to last. The thought made its way into his mind, finally, that she looked on as if these matters did not touch her at all and she was only faintly curious about them. Her eyes rested on him with a secret air of watchful interest; he met them more than once as he looked up and she did not turn them away. He sat through it all, full of vengeful resentment, and was at once wretched and happy, in spite of it and himself. When, at her father's request, she played and sang, he sat apart moody and yet full of clumsy rapture. He knew nothing of the music, but his passion found a tongue in it, nevertheless. If she had played badly he would have taken the lack of harmony for granted, but as she played well he experienced a pleasure, while he did not comprehend. When it was all over and he found himself out alone in the road in the dark, he was feverish still.