himself seriously--made a
point of it; but it wasn't simply a question of fancy and pretension.
His own estimate he saw ways, at one time and another, of dealing with:
but theirs, sooner or later, say what they might, would put him to the
practical proof. As the practical proof, accordingly, would naturally be
proportionate to the cluster of his attributes, one arrived at a scale
that he was not, honestly, the man to calculate. Who but a billionaire
could say what was fair exchange for a billion? That measure was the
shrouded object, but he felt really, as his cab stopped in Cadogan
Place, a little nearer the shroud. He promised himself, virtually, to
give the latter a twitch.

II

"They're not good days, you know," he had said to Fanny Assingham after
declaring himself grateful for finding her, and then, with his cup of
tea, putting her in possession of the latest news--the documents signed
an hour ago, de part et d'autre, and the telegram from his backers, who
had reached Paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little,
poor dears, seemed to think the whole thing a tremendous lark. "We're
very simple folk, mere country cousins compared with you," he had also
observed, "and Paris, for my sister and her husband, is the end of the
world. London therefore will be more or less another planet. It has
always been, as with so many of us, quite their Mecca, but this is their
first real caravan; they've mainly known 'old England' as a shop
for articles in india-rubber and leather, in which they've dressed
themselves as much as possible. Which all means, however, that you'll
see them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. We must be very easy with
them. Maggie's too wonderful--her preparations are on a scale! She
insists on taking in the sposi and my uncle. The others will come to
me. I've been engaging their rooms at the hotel, and, with all those
solemn signatures of an hour ago, that brings the case home to me."

"Do you mean you're afraid?" his hostess had amusedly asked.

"Terribly afraid. I've now but to wait to see the monster come. They're
not good days; they're neither one thing nor the other. I've really got
nothing, yet I've everything to lose. One doesn't know what still may
happen."

The way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came
out, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. It was a sign, that
is, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of