Mrs. Arbuthnot, unused to anything but candour, looked troubled at this question and began to murmur inarticulately, and the owner at once concluded that she was a widow—­a war one, of course, for other widows were old—­and that he had been a fool not to guess it.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, turning red right up to his fair hair.  “I didn’t mean—­h’m, h’m, h’m—­”

He ran his eye over the receipt he had written.  “Yes, I think that’s all right,” he said, getting up and giving it to her.  “Now,” he added, taking the six notes she held out and smiling, for Mrs. Arbuthnot was agreeable to look at, “I’m richer, and you’re happier.  I’ve got money, and you’ve got San Salvatore.  I wonder got is best.”

“I think you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot with her sweet smile.

He laughed and opened the door for her.  It was a pity the interview was over.  He would have liked to ask her to lunch with him.  She made him think of his mother, of his nurse, of all things kind and comforting, besides having the attraction of not being his mother or his nurse.

“I hope you’ll like the old place,” he said, holding her hand a minute at the door.  The very feel of her hand, even through its glove, was reassuring; it was the sort of hand, he thought, that children would like to hold in the dark.  “In April, you know, it’s simply a mass of flowers.  And then there’s the sea.  You must wear white.  You’ll fit in very well.  There are several portraits of you there.”

“Portraits?”

“Madonnas, you know.  There’s one on the stairs really exactly like you.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot smiled and said good-bye and thanked him.  Without the least trouble and at once she had got him placed in his proper category:  he was an artist and of an effervescent temperament.

She shook hands and left, and he wished she hadn’t.  After she was gone he supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only because she would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as soon have insisted on references from a saint in a nimbus as from that grave, sweet lady.

Rose Arbuthnot.

Her letter, making the appointment, lay on the table.

Pretty name.

That difficulty, then, was overcome.  But there still remained the other one, the really annihilating effect of the expense on the nest-eggs, and especially on Mrs. Wilkins’s, which was in size, compared with Mrs. Arbuthnot’s, as the egg of the plover to that of the duck; and this in its turn was overcome by the vision vouchsafed to Mrs. Wilkins, revealing to her the steps to be taken for its overcoming.  Having got San Salvatore—­the beautiful, the religious name, fascinated them—­they in their turn would advertise in the Agony Column of The Times, and would inquire after two more ladies, of similar desires to their own, to join them and share the expenses.