Cumulative also was this thrill, for it had begun some few days previously when Mr. Sturgiss, calling at Simcox’s for a chat with Mr. Simcox, an old friend, had come into her room and after mysteriously fidgetting with business and conversational trifles, had issued the invitation to dinner at his house at Cricklewood in language mysteriously couched. “My wife would like to meet you,” said Mr. Sturgiss. “She’s heard a lot from me, and from Field, of what an astonishingly clever young person we think you and she’d--she’d like to meet you. And more than that.” Mr. Sturgiss’s halting speech suddenly became direct and definitive like a flag that had been fluttering suddenly streaming upon the breeze. “And more than that. The fact is, there’s a proposition I want to put up to you. A proposition. We could go into it quietly and discuss it. I rather think it would interest you. I’m sure it will. You’ll come? Good. I’m very glad. Very glad.” A proposition! From Mr. Sturgiss! Of Field and Company! What could it be? But Rosalie was not of the sort to tread the succeeding days on the enchanted air of fond surmises. She told herself that the mysterious proposition might be everything or might be nothing: the fact that outstood was that she had brought her aspirations to this--that a partner in a London bank recognised in her stuff sufficient to invite her to a confidential meeting, there to go into something with her “quietly together,” to meet together over something and “discuss it.” She had determined to establish herself and she was establishing herself. And was it not an omen propitious and significant that this recognition of her parts was to fall on the very day on which the exercise of those parts brought her into the dignity and comfort of that delicious, that significant apartment of her own? This solid stuff, and no mere daydreams, was the delight absorbing her and the ecstasy to which she was abandoned when that great day came. In the morning she put the last of her possessions, the equipment of her dressing table, into the new apartment; after the day spent at Simcox’s, she returned to dress for the first time before the noble cheval glass purchased for the bedroom. She decided to go up in a hat; it could be removed or not for dinner as Mrs. Sturgiss might seem to indicate. She put on an evening bodice of black silk and net with a simple skirt in keeping. She gave last approving glances about the delightful rooms and set out, immersed in eager happiness, for Cricklewood.