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.

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'