He stood staring a second like a man of stone; and then turned abruptly from her and walked away. But in that second she saw that his petrifaction was already scattering, and his face wore the strangest look, like a kind of glory.... So Cally thought that he understood now; and that was all the reward she wanted. Sitting silent, she looked after his retreating back. She perceived, with a queer little twitching in her heart, that the polished spaces upon Mr. V.V.'s right elbow had thinned away into an unmistakable darning. And then it came over her quite suddenly that the reason he wore this suit to-day was probably that he had given his blue suit away, to one of his sick. She seemed quite sure that that was it. And oh, how like him, and like nobody else in the world, to give away his best one, and keep the patches for himself.... And the first thing that he said, returning to her after his thunderbolt surprise, seemed also beautifully characteristic of his strange faiths. "Well, it's wonderful," said he, in quite a natural voice. "Of course, the greatest thing that will ever happen to me.... And yet--it may seem strange to you--but I've felt all along--I've _felt_--that something like this might probably happen any time." Moved as she was, Cally could have smiled at that. But when she saw the intense honesty of his face, which still wore that half-startled yet shining look, the look of a man with a sudden secret all his own, she did not smile, and her own thought was given quite a new course. "Perhaps you're a nice sort of mind-reader," said she, gently, "for you were right to feel that way, at least as far as my father is concerned. I specially wanted you to know about that. Papa has been planning for six years to put up a new building--only last month he had arranged to spend quite a lot of money in repairs. I just came to understand all this to-day. The trouble has been," said Cally, looking up at the old family enemy with no sense of hesitation or reluctance--"I've always been too expensive, you see. I've never left him any money to carry out his plans...." She would not say anything about horse-leech's daughters, not, of all things, wanting to embarrass him to-day. But possibly his mind filled in a hiatus here, and there was no mistaking that what she said about her father impressed him profoundly. "I ... I really seem to have known. You might call it a sort of--of premonition--if you wanted to ... Though you'll naturally not think I've acted that way." Mr. V.V. stood by a spindly table, carefully examining a small but costly vase, the property of Mr. Heth, of the Cheroot Works; and now he went on with a kind of diffident resolution, the air of one who gives a confidence with difficulty, but must do so now, for his honor.