itself with a peculiar care, that it displayed more than usual interest in the trivial details of dress.  It rejected an otherwise irreproachable shirt because of a minute wine stain on the cuff.  It sniffed critically at its coat and trousers, and flung them to the other end of the room.  It arrayed itself finally in a brand-new suit of grey flannel, altogether inexpressive of his role.  He could not but feel that its behaviour compromised the dignity of the character he had determined to represent.  It is not in his best coat and trousers that the book-dealer sets out on the dusty quest of the Aldine Plato and the Neapolitan Horace and the Aurea Legenda of Wynkyn de Worde.

He could no longer conceal the fact that he had dressed himself elaborately for an interview with Miss Harden.  But he endeavoured to adjust his mind to a new and less disturbing view of the lady.  He had seen her last night through a flush of emotion that obscured her; he would see her to-day in the pure and imperturbable light of the morning, and his nerves should not play the devil with him this time.  He would be cool, calm, incorruptibly impersonal, as became Rickman, the man of business, Rickman of Rickman’s.

Unfortunately, though the role was rehearsed with ease in the privacy of his bedroom, it proved impossible to sustain it under Miss Harden’s candid eyes.  At the first sight of them he lost all grasp and memory of his part; he broke down disgracefully, miserably.  The sound of her voice revived his agony of the previous night.  True, the flush of emotion had subsided, but in the fierce intellectual light that followed, his doubts and scruples showed plainer than ever.  They even acquired a certain logical order and cohesion.

He concealed himself behind the projecting wing of a bookcase and wrestled with them there.  Dispassionately considered, the situation stood thus.  He was possessed of certain knowledge relating to Sir Frederick Harden’s affairs.  That was neither bad nor good.  He had allowed Sir Frederick Harden’s daughter to engage him in a certain capacity, knowing perfectly well that she would not have done so had she herself possessed that knowledge.  That was bad—­distinctly bad.  He was going to take advantage of that engagement to act in another capacity, not contemplated by his employer, namely, as valuer of said employer’s property and possibly as the agent for its purchase, well knowing that such purchase would be effected without reference to its intrinsic or even to its market value.  That was worse.

These were the simple data of his problem.  The problem (seen with excruciating lucidity) stated itself thus.  Assuming, first of all, Miss Harden’s ignorance and his own knowledge, what was the correct attitude of his knowledge to her ignorance?  In other words, was it his business to enlighten her as to the state of her father’s finances?

No; it might be somebody else’s business, but most decidedly it was not his.  His business, as far as he could see it, was simply to withdraw as gracefully as possible from a position so difficult to occupy with any decency.