It offered him a sight none the less agreeable for being unexpected—the graceful and agitated figure of Mrs. Ryves. Her agitation was so visible that he thought at first that something dreadful had happened to her child—that she had rushed up to ask for help, to beg him to go for the doctor. Then he perceived that it was probably connected with the desperate verses he had transmitted to her a quarter of an hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was nervously pulling it about with the other. She looked frightened and pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it with levity. The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured, however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing forward the seat of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit. The visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse—that of thanking him for it in person and without delay. “It was the impulse of a kind nature,” he said, “and I can’t tell you what pleasure you give me.” She declined to sit down, and evidently wished to appear to have come but for a few seconds. She looked confusedly at the place in which she found herself, and when her eyes met his own they struck him as anxious and appealing. She was evidently not thinking of his song, though she said three or four times over that it was beautiful. “Well, I only wanted you to know, and now I must go,” she added; but on his hearthrug she lingered with such an odd helplessness that he felt almost sorry for her. “Perhaps I can improve it if you find it doesn’t go,” said Baron. “I’m so delighted to do anything for you I can.” “There may be a word or two that might be changed,” she answered, rather absently. “I shall have to think it over, to live with it a little. But I like it, and that’s all I wanted to say.” “Charming of you. I’m not a bit busy,” said Baron. Again she looked at him with a troubled intensity, then suddenly she demanded: “Is there anything the matter with you?” “The matter with me?” “I mean like being ill or worried. I wondered if there might be; I had a sudden fancy; and that, I think, is really why I came up.” “There isn’t, indeed; I’m all right. But your sudden fancies are inspirations.” “It’s absurd. You must excuse me. Good-by!” said Mrs. Ryves. “What are the words you want changed?” Baron asked.