“And what establishment is that, now?” the young man asked, gaining confidence and perceiving, in detail, how handsome she was. He hadn’t roamed about London for nothing, and he knew that when a girl was so handsome as that, a jocular tone of address, a pleasing freedom, was _de rigueur;_ so he added, “Is it the Bull and Gate, or the Elephant and Castle?” “A public house! Well, you haven’t got the politeness of a Frenchman, at all events!” Her good-nature had come back to her perfectly, and her resentment of his imputation of her looking like a bar-maid—a blowzy beauty who handled pewter—was tempered by her more and more curious consideration of Hyacinth’s form. He was exceedingly ‘rum’, but this quality took her fancy, and since he remembered so well that she had been fond of kissing him, in their early days she would have liked to say to him that she stood prepared to repeat this form of attention. But she reminded herself, in time, that her line should be, religiously, the ladylike, and she was content to exclaim, simply, “I don’t care what a man looks like so long as he’s clever. That’s the form _I_ like!” Miss Pynsent had promised herself the satisfaction of taking no further notice of her brilliant invader; but the temptation was great to expose her to Hyacinth, as a mitigation of her brilliancy, by remarking sarcastically, according to opportunity, “Miss ’Enning wouldn’t live in Lomax Place for the world. She thinks it too abominably low.” “So it is; it’s a beastly hole,” said the young man. The poor dressmaker’s little dart fell to the ground, and Millicent exclaimed, jovially, “Right you are!” while she directed to the object of her childhood’s admiration a smile that put him more and more at his ease. “Don’t you suppose I’m clever?” he asked, planted before her with his little legs slightly apart, while, with his hands behind him, he made the open door waver to and fro.