On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence.  Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need not penetrate.  The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert thought extremely reasonable.

“Eight thousand dollars!” As she stood with her back turned, looking out on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot for that exact sum.  And as cashier of Mr. Isham’s bank, he did not earn so much in a year.

She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the task remained, of getting Howard into it.  In the consideration of this most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious.  She was startled out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the part of Mr. Cuthbert.

“Oh, he’ll come round all right, when he sees the house,” that young gentleman declared.

Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in spite of herself.  It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he became; before one knew it, an accomplice.  Had he not poured out to Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial troubles?

“I’m afraid he’ll think it frightfully expensive,” she answered, becoming thoughtful once more.  And it did not occur to her that neither of them had mentioned the individual to whom they referred.

“Wait until he’s feeling tiptop,” Mr. Cuthbert advised, “and then bring him up here in a hurry.  I say, I hope you do take the house,” he added, with a boyish seriousness after she had refused his appeal to lunch with him, “and that you will let me come and see you once in a while.”

She lunched alone, in a quiet corner of the dining-room of one of the large hotels, gazing at intervals absently out of the window.  And by the middle of the afternoon she found herself, quite unexpectedly, in the antique furniture shop, gazing at the sideboard and a set of leather-seated Jacobean chairs, and bribing the dealer with a smile to hold them for a few days until she could decide whether she wished them.  In a similar mood of abstraction she boarded the ferry, but it was not until the boat had started on its journey that she became aware of a trim, familiar figure in front of her, silhouetted against the ruffed blue waters of the river—­Trixton Brent’s.  And presently, as though the concentration of her thoughts upon his back had summoned him, he turned.

“Where have you been all this time?” she asked.  “I haven’t seen you for an age.”

“To Seattle.”

“To Seattle!” she exclaimed.  “What were you doing there?”