To his great relief, Miss Dickenson did not catechize him closely about his religious views. She only remarked, reflectively and vaguely:--"One hardly knows what to think. Anyone would have said my father was a religious man, and what does he do but marry a widow, less than three years after my mother's death!" Certainly the coherency of this speech was not on its surface. But Mr. Pellew accepted it contentedly enough. At least, it clothed him with some portion of the garb of a family friend; say shoes or gloves, not the whole suit. Whichever it was, he pulled them on, and felt they fitted. He began to speak, and stopped; was asked what he was going to say, and went on, encouraged:--"I was going to say, only I pulled up because it felt impertinent...." "Not to me! Please tell me exactly!" "I was going to ask, how old is your father? Is he older than me?" "Why, of course he is! I'm thirty-six. How old are you? Tell the truth!" At this exact moment a funny thing happened. The _passee_ elderly young lady vanished--she who had been so often weighed, found wanting, and been put back in the balance for reconsideration. She vanished, and a desirable _alter ego_--Mr. Pellew's, as he hoped--was looking across at him from the sofa by the window, swinging the tassel of the red blind that kept the sun in check, and hushed it down to a fiery glow on the sofa's occupant waiting to know how old he was. "I thought I had told you. Nearly forty-six." "Very well, then! My father is five-and-twenty years your senior." "If you had to say exactly _why_ you dislike your father's having married again, do you think you could?" "Oh dear, no! I'm quite sure I couldn't. But I think it detestable for all that." "I'm not sure that you're right. You may be, though! Are you sure it hasn't something to do with the ... with the party he's married?" "Not at all sure." Dryly. "Can't understand objecting to a match on its own account. It's always something to do with the outsider that comes in--the one one knows least of." "You wouldn't like this one." It may seem inexplicable, that these words should be the cause of the person addressed taking the nearest chair to the speaker, having previously been a nomad with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Close analysis may connect the action with an extension of the family-friendship wardrobe, which it may have recognised--a neckcloth, perhaps--and may be able to explain why it seemed doubtful form to the Hon. Percival to keep his thumbs in those waistcoat-loops. To us, it is perfectly easy to understand--without any analysis at all--why, at this juncture, Miss Dickenson said:--"I suppose you know you may smoke a cigarette, if you like?"