“Oh, you never can tell anything about her,” he said.  “Do you know her?  She’s a sphinx.  All the Pendletons are Stoics.  And besides, she’s been so busy with this Charities Conference that she hasn’t had time to think of Cecil.  Who’s that?”

“That” was a lady from Rivington, one of Honora’s former neighbours, to whom she had bowed.  Life, indeed, is full of contrasts.  Mr. Cuthbert, too, was continually bowing and waving to acquaintances on the Avenue.

Thus pleasantly conversing, they arrived at the first house on the list, and afterwards went through a succession of them.  Once inside, Honora would look helplessly about her in the darkness while her escort would raise the shades, admitting a gloomy light on bare interiors or shrouded furniture.

And the rents:  Four, five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars a year.  Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr. Cuthbert; and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing which realized her somewhat vague but persistent ideals.

“I’m so much obliged to you,” she said, “and I hope you’ll forgive me for wasting your time.”

Mr. Cuthbert smiled broadly, and Honora smiled too.

Indeed, there was something ludicrous in the remark.  He assumed an attitude of reflection.

“I imagine you wouldn’t care to go over beyond Lexington Avenue, would you?  I didn’t think to ask you.”

“No,” she replied, blushing a little, “I shouldn’t care to go over as far as that.”

He pondered a while longer, when suddenly his face lighted up.

“I’ve got it!” he cried, “the very thing—­why didn’t.  I think of it?  Dicky Farnham’s house, or rather his wife’s house.  I’ll get it straight after a while,—­she isn’t his wife any more, you know; she married Eustace Rindge last month.  That’s the reason it’s for rent.  Dicky says he’ll never get married again—­you bet!  They planned it together, laid the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge.  I saw her before she sailed, and she begged me to rent it.  But it isn’t furnished.”

“I might look at it,” said Honora, dubiously.

“I’m sure it will just suit you,” he declared with enthusiasm.  “It’s a real find.  We’ll drive around by the office and get the keys.”

The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little oak-panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real estate agent—­a most difficult thing to remember.

Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the entire width of the house.  Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood.  Behind the little hall a cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room.  And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the sideboard for such a setting.