"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's. If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination that the old place possessed. The Dials was, in point of fact, very agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property. "It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner. You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy. Don't have it rebuilt by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened by some inebriated Adam out of charity. Leave it beautifully alone." "Oh, I will," he assured her. "It shall tumble away and crush away in peace. You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really will come down for Christmas? You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's house is rather empty." "Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer. "You see, every one else has gone back on him." "Poor dear," sympathized the lady. "Of course we'll go down." No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. There was the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer. Her father had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken generations to perfect. These distinctions her clever father bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her curling hair. Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of wine, they were left alone. Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame. Tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et loup_ at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found Bulstrode still staying on....