“It is no trouble,” said V. Vivian.

Good sentences these, and well pronounced.  With them, conversation seemed to languish.  The processional pair moved across the shadowy court in entire silence.  The benevolent lady led, never so securely entrenched in the victorious order, the beloved of prodigal Hugo Canning, to whom no harm should befall.  After her proceeded the slum doctor:  the hard marble betrayed the inequality of his footsteps.  A minute more and they would be upstairs, swallowed and dispersed in the publicity of the meeting.  Floor and ceiling above them brought down the sounds of a company near at hand, the scraping of a chair-leg, the muffled echo of voices.  Carlisle’s foot trod upon the bottom step of the broad stairway.

“I wonder if you would give me five minutes after the meeting, Miss Heth?” said the young man’s voice behind her.  “There’s a—­a matter I’ve wanted very much to speak to you about.”

Cally’s heart seemed to jump a little.

“What is it that you want to speak to me about?” she asked coolly, not turning.  And, to her own surprise, she brought her other foot up on the stair.

“Well, it concerns the Works,” said Vivian.

And he added at once, hastily:  “Oh, nothing that you need object to at all, I hope.  Not at all....”

She had stopped short at the fighting-word, and turned, pink-cheeked.  Certes, there was a point at which noblesse oblige becomes mere flabby spinelessness.

And upstairs Mrs. Heth, complacent right up at the front, craned round her neck, and thought that Cally was very long in coming....

“Yes?  What about the Works?” said Cally, her breath quickening.

“Oh, I don’t mean to detain you now, of course—­”

“But now that you have detained me?” she pursued, with no great polish of courtesy.

The young man raised a hand and pushed back his hair, which was short but wavy.  It was observed that he wore, doubtless in memory of his uncle, a mourning tie of grosgrain silk, replacing the piquant aquarium scene.

“I could hardly explain it all in just a few sentences,” said he, affecting reluctance, “and I—­certainly don’t want to give you a wrong impression....  To begin quite at the end, I’ve been wondering if I—­I might be allowed to make one or two small improvements there, at the Works, I mean,—­in fact, out of a—­a sort of fund I have.”

Carlisle stared at him spellbound.  She stood on the bottom step of the old grand stairway, one gloved hand on the balustrade; and, as she so stood, her eyes just came on a level with those of the tall doctor.  His hare-brained audacity almost took her breath away.

“Oh,” said she.  “Out of a fund you have.”

And she thought wildly of accepting his offer at once, compelling him to name a definite sum, just for the fun of seeing how he would wriggle out of it afterwards.