it first. I rather thought it would be
me; but for pure, delightful unexpectedness, give me a parquet floor.
I wouldn't mop it up with my pocket handkerchief, if I were you."

"No--please--it doesn't matter. It happens every day."

"And it puts a visitor on an agreeable footing at once. You _can't_
keep up any stiffness or formality, when what you took for a
drawing-room turns itself into a skating rink."

"Quite so," said Rickman, "and if you fall, it breaks the ice." He was
entering shyly into her humour. "I'm afraid my be-h-haviour wasn't
quite so h-happy and spontaneous as it might have been."

"I assure you it was extremely naive and natural, as far as it went,"
said Kitty, laughing.

"I think you were very clever to keep your balance," said Lucia.

"Too clever by half. If you'd been a really genial person, Mr.
Rickman, you'd have lost it."

Thus lightly did they cover his confusion, thus adroitly turn the
malignant hand of circumstance.

"Kitty," said Lucia, "I don't want to hurry you, but it's past nine,
and you'll _have_ to hurry if you don't want to be late."

"But I do want to be late. I mean to be late. I can't eat sandwiches
for more than two hours."

And Kitty flung herself on her settee again in crosslegged,
unpremeditated ease, and there she conversed with Mr. Rickman as if
she had known him all her life. Kitty was amused at last.

So was Mr. Rickman. He found himself answering with appropriate
light-heartedness; he heard himself laughing in the manner of one
infinitely at ease. It was impossible to be anything else in Kitty
Palliser's society. He was, in fact, surprised. Though it was only by
immense expenditure of thought and effort that he managed to secure
the elusive aspirate, still he secured it. Never for a moment did he
allow himself to be cheated into the monstrous belief that its absence
was, or could be unperceived.

But though he was grateful to Miss Palliser, he wished all the time
that she would go. At last she rose and drew her fur-collared cloak
about her with a slow, reluctant air.

"Well, I suppose I must be off. I shall be back before eleven, Lucy.
Good-night, Mr. Rickman, if I don't see you again."

He was alone with Lucia Harden.

It was one thing to be alone with Lucia Harden in the library or on
Harcombe Moor, and quite another thing to be left with her in that
lamp-lit, fire-lit room. The library belonged to her race and to their
historic past; the moor to nature