Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.

“It’s all very well, all this,” he said, “but what’s it going to cost?”

The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket: 

“The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as I thought you wouldn’t stand that, I’ve compromised for a facing.  It ought to have a copper roof, but I’ve made it green slate.  As it is, including metal work, it’ll cost you eight thousand five hundred.”

“Eight thousand five hundred?” said Soames.  “Why, I gave you an outside limit of eight!”

“Can’t be done for a penny less,” replied Bosinney coolly.

“You must take it or leave it!”

It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have been made to Soames.  He was nonplussed.  Conscience told him to throw the whole thing up.  But the design was good, and he knew it—­there was completeness about it, and dignity; the servants’ apartments were excellent too.  He would gain credit by living in a house like that—­with such individual features, yet perfectly well-arranged.

He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his bedroom to shave and dress.

The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames watching him out of the corner of his eye.

The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow—­so he thought—­when he was properly got up.

Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.

She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.

“No, no,” said Soames, “we’ve still got business to talk over!”

At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to eat.  He was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits, and left him to spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole off to his pictures, after his Sunday habit.  At tea-time he came down to the drawing-room, and found them talking, as he expressed it, nineteen to the dozen.

Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things were taking the right turn.  It was lucky she and Bosinney got on; she seemed to be falling into line with the idea of the new house.

Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the five hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might have softened Bosinney’s estimates.  It was so purely a matter which Bosinney could remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen ways in which he could cheapen the production of a house without spoiling the effect.

He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the architect his first cup of tea.  A chink of sunshine through the lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her hair, and in her soft eyes.  Possibly the same gleam deepened Bosinney’s colour, gave the rather startled look to his face.

Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind.  Then he took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more coldly than he had intended: