u
sit in that leather chair at the table, as you may have to take notes?'

The young man assented, expressed his gratification, and went to the
chair she designated.

'But, Mr. Somerset,' she continued, from the ottoman--the width of the
table only dividing them--'I first should just like to know, and I trust
you will excuse my inquiry, if you are an architect in practice, or only
as yet studying for the profession?'

'I am just going to practise. I open my office on the first of January
next,' he answered.

'You would not mind having me as a client--your first client?' She
looked curiously from her sideway face across the table as she said
this.

'Can you ask it!' said Somerset warmly. 'What are you going to build?'

'I am going to restore the castle.'

'What, all of it?' said Somerset, astonished at the audacity of such an
undertaking.

'Not the parts that are absolutely ruinous: the walls battered by the
Parliament artillery had better remain as they are, I suppose. But we
have begun wrong; it is I who should ask you, not you me.... I fear,'
she went on, in that low note which was somewhat difficult to catch at
a distance, 'I fear what the antiquarians will say if I am not very
careful. They come here a great deal in summer and if I were to do the
work wrong they would put my name in the papers as a dreadful person.
But I must live here, as I have no other house, except the one in
London, and hence I must make the place habitable. I do hope I can trust
to your judgment?'

'I hope so,' he said, with diffidence, for, far from having much
professional confidence, he often mistrusted himself. 'I am a Fellow
of the Society of Antiquaries, and a Member of the Institute of British
Architects--not a Fellow of that body yet, though I soon shall be.'

'Then I am sure you must be trustworthy,' she said, with enthusiasm.
'Well, what am I to do?--How do we begin?'

Somerset began to feel more professional, what with the business
chair and the table, and the writing-paper, notwithstanding that these
articles, and the room they were in, were hers instead of his; and an
evenness of manner which he had momentarily lost returned to him. 'The
very first step,' he said, 'is to decide upon the outlay--what is it to
cost?'

He faltered a little, for it seemed to disturb the softness of their
relationship to talk thus of hard cash. But her sympathy with his
feeling was apparently not great, and she said, 'The expenditure sh