“I’m sure I don’t know,” she replied.

“Old Marshall left her five million dollars.”

“What has that to do with it?” inquired Honora.

“She isn’t going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing.”

“Wouldn’t it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house.  You know you proposed it yourself, and it won’t take very much of your time.”

He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.

“Howard,” she said, “I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt.  We haven’t been at Silverdale all summer.  Here’s a note from her saying she’ll be in town to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her at her hotel.  I think I’ll go to Silverdale a little later.”

“Why don’t you?” he said.  “It would do you good.”

“And you?” she asked.

“My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora.  You know that.  And I wouldn’t spend another day at Silverdale if they gave me a deed to the property,” he declared.

On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton Brent.

“Whither away?” he cried in apparent astonishment.  “Up at dawn, and the eight o’clock train!”

“We were going to look at a house,” explained Honora, “and Howard has no other time.”

“I’ll go, too,” declared Mr. Brent, promptly.  “You mightn’t think me a judge of houses, but I am.  I’ve lived in so many bad ones that I know a good one when I see it now.”

“Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I’m going to take the Farnham house,” said Howard, smiling.  There, on the deck of the ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him amusement.  With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.

“Well, perhaps you are,” said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink.  “I shouldn’t like to take the other end of the bet.  Why shouldn’t you?  You’re fat and healthy and making money faster than you can gather it in.”

Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably.  Trixton Brent was not a man to offend.

“Honora has got that delusion, too,” he replied.  He steeled himself in his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife’s side lent a different aspect to the situation.

Honora, during this colloquy, was silent.  She was a little uncomfortable, and pretended not to see Mr. Brent’s wink.

“Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this morning,” he observed; “we might have gone in that.  It landed three days ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver shots.”

“Oh, I do wish you had it,” said Honora, relieved by the change of subject.  “To drive in one must be such a wonderful sensation.”