‘My object is an invasion rather than a hunt,’ I said, drawing back that she might enter. ‘Just as it was the last time you and I were here!’ she went on, with scarcely a pause, and as easily as if there had never been any misunderstanding between us. I had thought myself beyond any further influence from her fascinations, but when I looked in her beautiful face, and heard her allude to the past with so much friendliness, and such apparent unconsciousness of any reason for forgetting it, a tremor ran through me from head to foot. I mastered myself sufficiently to reply, however. ‘It is the last time you will see it so,’ I said; ‘for here stands the Hercules of the stable--about to restore it to cleanliness, and what is of far more consequence in a library--to order.’ ‘You don’t mean it!’ she exclaimed with genuine surprise. ‘I’m so glad I’m here!’ ‘Are you on a visit, then?’ ‘Indeed I am; though how it came about I don’t know. I dare say my father does. Lady Brotherton has invited me, stiffly of course, to spend a few weeks during their stay. Sir Giles must be in it: I believe I am rather a favourite with the good old man. But I have another fancy: my grandfather is getting old; I suspect my father has been making himself useful, and this invitation is an acknowledgment. Men always buttress their ill-built dignities by keeping poor women in the dark; by which means you drive us to infinite conjecture. That is how we come to be so much cleverer than you at putting two and two together, and making five.’ ‘But,’ I ventured to remark, ‘under such circumstances, you will hardly enjoy your visit.’ ‘Oh! sha’n’t I? I shall get fun enough out of it for that. They are--all but Sir Giles--they are great fun. Of course they don’t treat me as an equal, but I take it out in amusement. You will find you have to do the same.’ ‘Not I. I have nothing to do with them. I am here as a skilled workman--one whose work is his sufficient reward. There is nothing degrading in that--is there? If I thought there was, of course I shouldn’t come.’ ‘You _never_ did anything you felt degrading?’ ‘No.’ ‘Happy mortal!’ she said, with a sigh--whether humorous or real, I could not tell. ‘I have had no occasion,’ I returned. ‘And yet, as I hear, you have made your mark in literature?’ ‘Who says that? I should not.’ ‘Never mind,’ she rejoined, with, as I fancied, the look of having said more than she ought. ‘But,’ she added, ‘I wish you would tell me in what periodicals you write.’ ‘You must excuse me. I do not wish to be first known in connection with fugitive things. When first I publish a book, you may be assured my name will be on the title-page. Meantime, I must fulfil the conditions of my _entrée_.’ ‘And I must go and pay my respects to Lady Brotherton. I have only just arrived.’ ‘Won’t you find it dull? There’s nobody of man-kind at home but Sir Giles.’ ‘You are unjust. If Mr Brotherton had been here, I shouldn’t have come. I find him troublesome.’