I hope you have been
one very long. No--I don't know what I mean, except that I'm sorry."

He laughed again. "Oh I'm used to it. I haven't anybody. No
sisters or brothers."

"Then you're an only child," she observed intelligently.

"Yes. And there's something about you that's exactly my idea of
a--of a family."

She was amused.

"So--cosy," he said, looking at her and searching for a word.

"You wouldn't think so if you saw my house in Hampstead," she
said, a vision of that austere and hard-seated dwelling presenting
itself to her mind, with nothing soft in it except the shunned and
neglected Du Barri sofa. No wonder, she thought, for a moment
clear-brained, that Frederick avoided it. There was nothing cosy
about his family.

"I don't believe any place you lived in could be anything but
exactly like you," he said.

"You're not going to pretend San Salvatore is like me?"

"Indeed I do pretend it. Surely you admit that it is beautiful?"

He said several things like that. She enjoyed her walk. She
could not recollect any walk so pleasant since her courting days.

She came back to tea, bringing Mr. Briggs, and looking quite
different, Mr. Wilkins noticed, from what she had looked till then.
Trouble here, trouble here, thought Mr. Wilkins, mentally rubbing his
professional hands. He could see himself being called in presently to
advise. On the one hand there was Arbuthnot, on the other hand here
was Briggs. Trouble brewing, trouble sooner or later. But why had
Briggs's telegram acted on the lady like a blow? If she had turned
pale from excess of joy, then trouble was nearer than he had supposed.
She was not pale now; she was more like her name than he had yet seen
her. Well, he was the man for trouble. He regretted, of course, that
people should get into it, but being in he was their man.

And Mr. Wilkins, invigorated by these thoughts, his career being
very precious to him, proceeded to assist in doing the honours to Mr.
Briggs, both in his quality of sharer in the temporary ownership of San
Salvatore and of probable helper out of difficulties, with great
hospitality, and pointed out the various features of the place to him,
and led him to the parapet and showed him Mezzago across the bay.

Mrs. Fisher too was gracious. This was this young man's house.
He was a man of property. She liked property, and she liked men of
property. Also there seemed a peculiar merit in being a man of
proper