Covers had been laid for twelve; immaculate linen, beautiful silver, and sparkling cut-glass. He wondered how much the girl was worth, and thought of his own miserable forty-five hundred the year. True, his capital could at any time be converted into cash, some seventy-five thousand, but it would be no longer the goose with the golden egg. A great bowl of roses stood on a glass center-piece. As he leaned toward them to inhale their perfume he heard a sound. He turned. She stood framed in a doorway, a picture such as artists conjure up to fit in sunlit corners of gloomy studios: beauty, youth, radiance, luster, happiness. To his ardent eyes she was supremely beautiful. How wildly his heart beat! This was the first time he had seen her in all her glory. His emotion was so strong that he did not observe that she was biting her nether lip. "Is everything well, James?" she asked, meaning the possibilities of service and not the cardiac intranquillity of the servant. "Very well, Miss Annesley,"--with a sudden bold scrutiny. Whatever it was she saw in his eyes it had the effect of making hers turn aside. To bridge the awkwardness of the moment, he rearranged a napkin; and she remarked his hands. They were tanned, but they were elegantly shaped and scrupulously well taken care of--the hands of a gentleman born, of an aristocrat. He could feel her gaze penetrate like acid. He grew visibly nervous. "You haven't the hand of a servant, James,"--quietly. He started, and knocked a fork to the floor. "They are too clumsy," she went on maliciously. "I am not a butler, Miss; I am a groom. I promise to do the very best I can." Wrath mingled with the shame on his face. "A man who can do what you did this morning ought not to be afraid of a dinner-table." "There is some difference between a dinner-table and a horse, Miss." He stooped to recover the fork while she touched her lips with her handkerchief. The situation was becoming unendurable. He knew that, for some reason, she was quietly laughing at him. "Never put back on the table a fork or piece of silver that has fallen to the floor," she advised. "Procure a clean one." "Yes, Miss." Why, in heaven's name, didn't she go and leave him in peace? "And be very careful not to spill a drop of the burgundy. It is seventy-eight, and a particular favorite of my father's." Seventy-eight! As if he hadn't had many a bottle of that superb vintage during the past ten months! The glands in his teeth opened at the memory of that taste. "James, we have been in the habit of paying off the servants on this day of the month. Payday comes especially happy this time. It will put good feeling into all, and make the service vastly more expeditious." She counted out four ten-dollar notes from a roll in her hand and signified him to approach. He took the money, coolly counted it, and put it in his vest-pocket. "Thank you, Miss."