Mrs. Gracedew, with a friendly laugh, caught the words in their passage. “But who in the world wants to keep it _in_? It isn’t a secret--it isn’t a strange cat or a political party!” The housekeeper, as she talked, had already dropped from her; her sense of the place was too fresh for control, though instead of half an hour it might have taken six months to become so fond. She soared again, at random, to the noble spring of the roof. “Just look at those lovely lines!” They all looked, all but Clement Yule, and several of the larger company, subdued, overwhelmed, nudged each other with strange sounds. Wherever she turned Mrs. Gracedew appeared to find a pretext for breaking out. “Just look at the tone of that glass, and the gilding of that leather, and the cutting of that oak, and the dear old flags of the very floor.” It came back, came back easily, her impulse to appeal to the lawful heir, and she seemed, with her smile of universal intelligence, just to demand the charity of another moment for it. “To look, in this place, is to love!” A voice from the party she had in hand took it up with an artless guffaw that resounded more than had doubtless been meant and that, at any rate, was evidently the accompaniment of some private pinch applied to one of the ladies. “I _say_--to love!” It was one of the ladies who very properly replied. “It depends on who you look at!” Mr. Prodmore, in the geniality of the hour, made his profit of the simple joke. “Do you hear _that_, Captain? You must look at the right person!” Mrs. Gracedew certainly had not been looking at the wrong one. “I don’t think Captain Yule cares. He doesn’t do justice----!” Though her face was still gay, she had faltered, which seemed to strike the young man even more than if she had gone on. “To what, madam?” Well, on the chance she let him have it. “To the value of your house.” He took it beautifully. “I like to hear _you_ express it!” “I _can’t_ express it!” She once more looked all round, and so much more gravely than she had yet done that she might have appeared in trouble. She tried but, with a sigh, broke down. “It’s too inexpressible!” This was a view of the case to which Mr. Prodmore, for his own reasons, was not prepared to assent. Expression and formulation were what he naturally most desired, and he had just encountered a fountain of these things that he couldn’t prematurely suffer to fail him. “Do what you can for it, madam. It would bring it quite home.” Thus excited, she gave with sudden sombre clearness another try. “Well--the value’s a fancy value!” Mr. Prodmore, receiving it as more than he could have hoped, turned triumphant to his young friend. “Exactly what I told you!” Mrs. Gracedew explained indeed as if Mr. Prodmore’s triumph was not perhaps exactly what she had argued for. Still, the truth was too great. “When a thing’s unique, it’s unique!” That was every bit Mr. Prodmore required. “It’s unique!”