A longish pause. Then the general: "You seem to be a little--afraid of me. I don't know why it is that people are always that way with me." A halt, to give her the opportunity to say the obvious flattering thing. Mildred said nothing, gave no sign. He went on: "It will wear away as we know each other better. I am a simple, plain man--kind and generous in my instincts. Of course I am dignified, and I do not like familiarity. But I do not mean to inspire fear and awe." A still longer pause. "Well, everything is settled," said the general. "We understand each other clearly?--not an engagement, nothing binding on either side--simply a--a--an option without forfeit." And he laughed--his laugh was a ghoulish sound, not loud but explosive and an instant check upon demonstration of mirth from anyone else. "I understand," said Mildred with a glance toward the door through which Presbury and his wife had disappeared. "Now, we'll join the others, and I'll show you the house"--again the laugh--"what may be your future home--one of them." The four were soon started upon what was for three of them a weariful journey despite the elevator that spared them the ascents of the stairways. The house was an exaggerated reproduction of all the establishments of the rich who confuse expenditure with luxury and comfort. Bill Siddall had bought "the best of everything"; that is, the things into which the purveyors of costly furnishings have put the most excuses for charging. Of taste, of comfort, of discrimination, there were few traces and these obviously accidental. "I picked out the men acknowledged to be the best in their different lines," said the general, "and I gave them carte blanche." "I see that at a glance," said Presbury. "You've done the grand thing on the grandest possible scale." "I've looked into the finest of the famous places on the other side," said the general. "All I can say is, I've had no regrets." "I should say not," cried Mrs. Presbury. With an affectation of modest hesitation--to show that he was a gentleman with a gentleman's fine appreciation of the due of maiden modesty--Siddall paused at the outer door of his own apartments. But at one sentence of urging from Mrs. Presbury he opened the door and ushered them in. And soon he was showing them everything--his Carrara marble bathroom and bathing-pool, his bed that had been used by several French kings, his dressing-room with its appliances of gold and platinum and precious stones, his clothing. They had to inspect a room full of suits, huge chiffoniers crowded with shirts and ties and underclothes. He exhibited silk dressing-robes and pajamas, pointed out the marks of the fashionable London and Paris makers, the monograms, the linings of ermine and sable. "I'm very particular about everything that touches me," explained he. "It seems to me a gentleman can't be too particular." With a meaning glance at Mildred, "And I'd feel the same way about my wife."