He found Mr. Dassonville willing to receive him in quite a friendly way, sitting in his library, keeping the place with his finger in the book he had been reading to his wife. Peter also found himself a little at a loss to know how to begin in the presence of this lady, for he considered it a matter quite between men, but suddenly she looked up and smiled. It came out on her face fresh and delicately as an apple orchard breaking to bloom, and besides making it quite spring in the room, discovered in herself a new evidence of the competency of Mr. David Dassonville to advise the way of riches. She looked fragile and expensive as she sat in her silken shawl, her dark hair lifted up in a half moon from her brow, her hands lying in her lap half-covered with the lace of her sleeves, white and perfect like twin flowers. He saw rings flashing on the one she lifted to motion to the maid to bring a chair. "If you have walked over from Bloombury you must be tired," she said, "and chilled, perhaps. Come nearer the fire." "No, thank you," Peter had managed, "I am quite warm," as in fact he was, and a little flushed. He sat down provisionally on the edge of the chair and looked at Mr. Dassonville. "I came on business. I don't know if you will mind its being Sunday, but I couldn't get away from the store on other days." "Quite right, quite right." Mr. Dassonville had lost his place in the book and laid it on his knee. "Private business? My dear, perhaps----" "Oh, no--no," protested Peter handsomely. "I'd rather she stayed. It isn't. At least ... I don't know if you will consider it private or not." "Go on," urged Mr. Dassonville. "I just came to ask you," Peter explained, "if you don't mind telling me, how you got rich?" "But bless you, young man," exclaimed Mr. Dassonville, "I'm not rich." This for a beginning, was, on the face of it, disconcerting. Peter looked about at the rows of books, at the thick, soft carpet and the leather-covered furniture, and at the rings on Mrs. Dassonville's hand. If Mr. Dassonville were not rich, how then--unless---- "I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought--that is, everybody says you are the richest man in these parts." "As to that, well, perhaps, I have a little more money than my neighbours." Peter breathed relief. The beautiful Mrs. Dassonville's rings were paid for, then. "But as to being _rich_, why, when you come to a really rich man all I've got wouldn't be a pinch to him." Mr. Dassonville illustrated with his own thumb and fingers how little that would be. "We don't have really rich men in a place like Harmony," he concluded. "You have to go to the city for that." "You've got everything you want, haven't you?" Mr. Dassonville looked over at his wife, and the smile bloomed again; he smiled quietly to himself as he admitted it. "Yes, I've got everything I want."