Three days later, when he came again, she made an excuse after dinner for showing him over the flat. He must see how well it was arranged. When they came to the lumber-room she opened the door quite casually, and there, in the company of discarded blouses, broken vases, faded flowers, and other rubbish, the tweed suit hung ostentatiously. "When I left the general's house I brought it and some other men's clothes here by mistake," she explained. "That's why it hangs there getting spoilt." His small, weak eyes lighted greedily. Did he perhaps know of someone to whom such things would be useful? He answered snappily that he did not, but he could not resist casting a downward glance at his own trousers. Wasn't there anyone to whom he would be doing a favour by offering the clothes? There was no one that he knew of, he repeated. In spite of her anxiety not to hurt his feelings, she plucked up courage and remarked that there was, if she were not mistaken, an extraordinary similarity between his figure and the quondam wearer's of the suit. The general might have been a trifle stouter, but any little tailor would alter ... Then he became seriously angry. He was not the man to accept benefits from any charitably disposed person he met. Did she think he had sunk so low as that? He had principles, and to wear cast-off raiment belonging to people he knew nothing about was a proceeding his principles would never tolerate. Lilly, with a sigh, reluctantly relinquished her idea. He seemed unable to tear himself away. He sat on and on and at last she was obliged to give him a hint, for at any moment now Richard might be coming in. At the top of the stairs he turned round again, and asked, stuttering, would it be as convenient if next time he came in the evening? "Can you no longer manage to get off at midday?" she asked, taken aback. On Richard's account she never received strangers late in the afternoon. "It wasn't that," he began to explain, lingering and hesitating, so that she listened in a fever for footsteps on the stairs. "Well, what then?" "I should like to think over the matter you mentioned just now, and ... and ..." "Well, and what?" "And perhaps when it's dark I might ... carry the parcel away with me." And he rushed down the steps. "So he had to swallow his pride, poor fellow!" she thought, as she looked after him full of pity. The same evening she made a parcel of the things and sent them to him by post, with a sovereign and a thousand apologies. She wanted him to have a new hat, she said, and no trouble with regard to alterations. A few days later, when he put in an appearance again at dinner, one would hardly have known him, he looked so smart and brushed-up. The suit fitted as if made for him, and though the dandy boots were too long, he had prevented them turning up at the toe by padding them with cotton wool. Even the scornful servant scanned him with a more friendly eye.