Cytherea found that she had mistaken the drift of Miss Aldclyffe’s peculiar explicitness on the subject of advertising, and wrote to tell her brother that if he saw the notice it would be useless to reply.

3.  AUGUST THE TWENTY-FIFTH

Five days after the above-mentioned dialogue took place they went to London, and, with scarcely a minute’s pause, to the solicitors’ offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

They alighted opposite one of the characteristic entrances about the place—­a gate which was never, and could never be, closed, flanked by lamp-standards carrying no lamp.  Rust was the only active agent to be seen there at this time of the day and year.  The palings along the front were rusted away at their base to the thinness of wires, and the successive coats of paint, with which they were overlaid in bygone days, had been completely undermined by the same insidious canker, which lifted off the paint in flakes, leaving the raw surface of the iron on palings, standards, and gate hinges, of a staring blood-red.

But once inside the railings the picture changed.  The court and offices were a complete contrast to the grand ruin of the outwork which enclosed them.  Well-painted respectability extended over, within, and around the doorstep; and in the carefully swept yard not a particle of dust was visible.

Mr. Nyttleton, who had just come up from Margate, where he was staying with his family, was standing at the top of his own staircase as the pair ascended.  He politely took them inside.

’Is there a comfortable room in which this young lady can sit during our interview?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.

It was rather a favourite habit of hers to make much of Cytherea when they were out, and snub her for it afterwards when they got home.

‘Certainly—­Mr. Tayling’s.’  Cytherea was shown into an inner room.

Social definitions are all made relatively:  an absolute datum is only imagined.  The small gentry about Knapwater seemed unpractised to Miss Aldclyffe, Miss Aldclyffe herself seemed unpractised to Mr. Nyttleton’s experienced old eyes.

‘Now then,’ the lady said, when she was alone with the lawyer; ’what is the result of our advertisement?’

It was late summer; the estate-agency, building, engineering, and surveying worlds were dull.  There were forty-five replies to the advertisement.

Mr. Nyttleton spread them one by one before Miss Aldclyffe.  ’You will probably like to read some of them yourself, madam?’ he said.

‘Yes, certainly,’ said she.

’I will not trouble you with those which are from persons manifestly unfit at first sight,’ he continued; and began selecting from the heap twos and threes which he had marked, collecting others into his hand.

’The man we want lies among these, if my judgment doesn’t deceive me, and from them it would be advisable to select a certain number to be communicated with.’