These were still for his audience wondrous explanations--they plainly required among the three some art of following; though the three, it was to be added, combined at moments, rather oddly, an appearance, a positive hush, of blankness, with the signified sufficiency of their own usual names for things. "We're not accustomed to think here that the last are as good as the first," Mrs. Midmore said, "and if you want to see the differences there _can_ be between them I flatter myself we shall have plenty to show you. You must let me tell you too," she went on, "that now that I know you I don't believe a word of their all dancing in America to such a tune as yours, and I believe it exactly least when you argue in such a pretty way for it." This appeared so to express her daughter's feeling too that Molly borrowed at once the fortunate word. "And his being a bachelor in spite of it, what's his argument for _that_, I should like to know! If it's so easy to marry there, and nobody can keep out of it, somebody ought to have caught you before poor me--though I'm sure I'm much obliged to all of those who failed." "Ah, my dear, none of 'em quite 'failed'" Ralph laughed. "'Quite, quite'?"--she echoed his amusement. "A miss is as good as a mile, and a girl either gets a husband or doesn't. Unless you mean"--she kept it up--"that though single you're engaged: to some other sweet creature, or perhaps to a dozen, as well as to me." And then while he felt himself exceed his smile as she blazed on him with this, "I don't _hold_ a man single who drags about twenty hearts: he's no better than Bluebeard himself--unless found out in time." "Fortunately I'm found out in time then," Ralph again laughed--"that is in time to give you the key of the dreadful room and yet trust in spite of it to your courage--not to say to your regard." "'Regard' is a fine word when you mean my foolish curiosity!" With which of a sudden she looked at him, he seemed to know, still harder and more intendingly than hitherto--to the effect in fact of his feeling more than ever how sufficiently he must meet it. That sufficiency, yes, took all his care--pulling on it there quite supremely; but there was notably always the luck that whereas such exchanges with her might have resulted for him most of all in the impression of something almost deadly in her force, what kept overriding them was the truth of her beauty. If this last indeed was of itself a deadly force he could but oppose to it an accepted fate--for what turn of her head, of her hand or of her spirit wasn't somehow a flash of that treasure? How she knew as much herself too, and fairly bettered it by rejoicing in it! "If I stare you out of countenance--and I do, mother, don't I, if you'll look at him!--it's because I'm not ashamed of my curiosity, or of any other good reason for looking at you! I thank you for the key, as you call it," she laughed on, "and I'm sure I already see the poor things strung up in their dreadful row."