of her to come to Paris and
meet him. She said not at all, it was no trouble, but a pleasure, or
rather it would be, if it weren't for the sad reason that brought her.

"Why, is anybody dead?" asked Sir Lionel, looking as if he were running
over a list in his head, but couldn't call up a name which concerned him
personally.

"There's been a thinning off among old friends lately, I'm sorry to say;
I've told you about most of them, I think, in postscripts," replied Mrs.
Norton. "But it wasn't their loss, poor dears, which brought me over. It
was the fire."

"What fire?" her brother wanted to know.

"Why, _your_ fire. Surely you must have seen about it in to-day's London
papers?"

"To-day's London papers won't get to Marseilles till to-morrow, and I
haven't been long enough in Paris to see one yet," explained Sir Lionel.
"Have I had a serious fire, and what has been burnt?" He spoke as coolly
as if it were the question of a mutton chop.

"Part of the house," returned Mrs. Norton, not even trying to break it
to him.

"I hope not the old part," said he.

"No, it is the new wing. But _that_ seemed to me such a pity. Such a
beautiful bathroom, hot and cold, spray and shower, quite destroyed; and
a noble linen closet, heated throughout with pipes, and fully stocked."

"The bathroom may have been early Pullman, and the linen closet late
German Lloyd, my dear Emily; but the rest of the house is Tudor, and
can't be replaced," said Sir Lionel; and I was sure, as he looked down
at his sister, of a thing I'd already suspected: that he has a sense of
humour. That's a modern improvement with which you wouldn't expect a
dragon to be fitted; but I begin to see that this is an elaborate and
complicated Dragon. Some people are Pharisees about their sense of
humour, and keep harping on it till you wish it were a live wire and
would electrocute them. _He_ would rather be ashamed of his, I fancy,
and yet it must have amused him, and made him feel good chums with
himself, away out in Bengal.

Mrs. Norton said that Warings had very handsome Tudor dining-rooms in
one or two of their model houses, so nothing was irrevocable nowadays;
but she was pleased, if he was, that only the modern wing was injured.
It had happened yesterday morning, just too late for the newspapers,
which must have annoyed the editors; and she had felt that it would be
best to undertake the journey to Paris, and consult about plans, as it
might make a difference