He might look her through and through, but she had no eyes for himself, though she had now quitted the fireplace and finally recognised this allusion. “Oh, yes--your home!” From where had she come back to it? “It’s a nice tattered, battered old thing.” This account of it was the more shrunken that her observation, even as she spoke, freshly went the rounds. “It has defects of course”--with this renewed attention they appeared suddenly to strike her. They had popped out, conspicuous, and for a little it might have been a matter of conscience. However, her conscience dropped. “But it’s no use mentioning them now!” They had half an hour earlier been vividly present to himself, but to see her thus oddly pulled up by them was to forget on the spot the ground he had taken. “I’m particularly sorry,” he returned with some spirit, “that you didn’t mention them before!” At this imputation of inconsequence, of a levity not, after all, without its excuse, Mrs. Gracedew was reduced, in keeping her resentment down, to an effort not quite successfully disguised. It was in a tone, nevertheless, all the more mild in intention that she reminded him of where he had equally failed. “If you had really gone over the house, as I almost went on my knees to you to do, you might have discovered some of them yourself!” “How can you say that,” the young man asked with heat, “when I was precisely in the very act of it? It was just _because_ I was that the first person I met above was Mr. Prodmore; on which, feeling that I must come to it sooner or later, I simply gave in to him on the spot--yielded him, to have it well over, the whole of his point.” She listened to this account of the matter as she might have gazed, from afar, at some queer object that was scarce distinguishable. It left her a moment in the deepest thought, but she presently recovered her tone. “Let me then congratulate you on at last knowing what you want!” But there were, after all, he instantly showed, no such great reasons for that. “I only know it so far as _you_ know it! I struck while the iron was hot--or at any rate while the hammer was.” “Of course I recognise”--she adopted his image with her restored gaiety--“that it can rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I blazed up, and I know that when I burn----” She had pulled up with the foolish sense of this. “When you burn?” “Well, I do it as Chicago does.” He also could laugh out now. “Isn’t that usually down to the ground?” Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light arms. “As high as the sky!” Then she came back, as with a scruple, to the real question. “I suppose you’ve still formalities to go through.” “With Mr. Prodmore?” Well, he would suppose it too if she liked. “Oh, endless, tiresome ones, no doubt!” This sketch of them made her wonder. “You mean they’ll take so very, very long?” He seemed after all to know perfectly what he meant. “Every hour, every month, that I can possibly make them last!”