Hearing of a desirable print owned by Mr. Knight, which it was understood he might be induced to part with, she drove thither to canvass the matter, accompanied by her niece.  On the way they picked up Augustus, who knew nothing of prints, but was pleased to join the expedition.

The Miser, beneath his grave courtesy, seemed taken aback by this invasion of his solitude.  Mrs. Pennington’s conventional suavity plainly embarrassed him.  He smiled indeed at Margaret Elizabeth, remarking as he spread out his engravings that it had been long since he last saw her.

The impulse was strong upon her to follow him to his desk and ask if he had any news of the Candy Man.  There were moments when she thought it strange she had had no word.  These were but fleeting moments, however; for the most part she succeeded, or thought she succeeded, in dismissing him to the limbo of the past.  So now she resisted the impulse to ask news of him.

When it came to negotiations Margaret Elizabeth and Augustus, leaving Mrs. Pennington to conduct them, moved about the room, viewing the Miser’s curios.

“Do you care for mezzotints?” she asked him.

“I don’t know the first thing about them,” Augustus owned.  “In fact never saw one.”

She laughed.  “Oh, yes, you have.  Ever so many of the Reynolds and Romney portraits were reproduced in mezzotint.  If I am not mistaken there is one hanging in your own hall.”

Augustus gazed at her in undisguised admiration.  “I don’t see how you learn so much, Miss Bentley.  I have no doubt I have a lot of things you could help me to appreciate.”

From this dangerous ground she moved hastily, calling attention to the portrait above the mantel.  Mr. McAllister was more at home here.

“A rattling good picture.  General Waite, by the way,” he informed her, “was own cousin to my grandmother on my mother’s side.  My great grandfather and his father were brothers, don’t you know.”

“Indeed!” said Margaret Elizabeth, politely.  The relationship did not interest her, but she wondered, in annoyance, why the cousin of Augustus, on his mother’s side, should look down on her with the eyes of the Candy Man.  Stern eyes they were, with a sparkle of humour behind the sternness.

On the way home Mrs. Pennington was stirred to reminiscence.  “One of the first parties I ever attended was in that old house,” she said.  “It must have been thirty-five years ago.  I was a very young girl—­barely seventeen.  General Waite was a most courtly man, and his wife was quite famous for her beauty.  It was there I met Mr. Pennington.  He and the general’s nephew, Robert Waite, were great friends.  They went to college together.  He disappeared strangely.  I remember Gerrard was dread fully upset about it at the time.  It was just before our marriage.”

To all this Margaret Elizabeth only half listened.  The eyes of the general lingered reproachfully with her, and perhaps were at the bottom of that policy of postponement with which Augustus was met when the inevitable moment came.