How the devil could she have known about it? "Where did you find that?" "I knew someone who had seen it--" she answered in the same voice, but her cheeks grew pinker--. "You have never seen it yourself?" "No--I have never been in England--." "----Never been in England?" I was stupefied. She went on hurriedly--I was going to write feverishly,--so quickly did she rush into questions of method in arranging the chapters, her armour was on again--she had become cautious, and was probably annoyed with herself for ever having allowed herself to slip off her guard. I knew that I could disconcert her, and probably obtain some interesting admissions from her--and have a thrilling fencing match, but some instinct warned me not to do so--I might win out for the time being, but if she has a secret which she does not wish me to discover, she will take care not again to put herself in a situation where this can happen. I have the apprehension always hanging, like Damocles' sword, over my head, of her relinquishing her post. Besides, why should I trouble her for my own satisfaction?--However, I registered a vow then that I would find out all I could from Maurice. The inference of everything she says, does and unconsciously infers, is that she is a cultivated lady, accustomed to talking with people of our world--people who know England and its great houses well enough to have made her familiar with the knowledge of where certain pieces of famous furniture are.--The very phrasing of her sentences is the phrasing of our Shibboleth, and not the phrasing of the professional classes. And yet--she is meanly dressed--does housework--and for years must have been trained in professional business methods. It is profoundly interesting. I have never even questioned Maurice as to how he heard of her. Well, I write all this down calmly, the record of the morning, to let myself look back on it, and to where the new intimacy might have led us, but for the sickening end to the day. Burton did not question her lunching with me this time--he had given the order as a matter of course--He is very fine in his distinctions, and understood that to make any change after she once had eaten with me would be invidious. By the time the waiters came in to lay the table, that sense of hurt, and then of numbness, had worn off--I was quite interested again in the work, and intensely intrigued about the possible history of the Sharp family! I was using cunning, too, and displaying casual indifference, so watchfulness was allowed to rest a little with the strange girl. "I believe if you will give me your help I shall be able to make quite a decent book of it after all,--but does it not seem absurd to trouble about such thing's as furniture with the world in ruins and Empires tottering!"--I remarked while the ark-relic handed the omelette--. "All that is only temporary--presently people will be glad to take up civilized interests again."