all else she felt instinctively that he was telling her the truth,
telling her even more than he need. His generous candor was a challenge
to her own.

"It may be very small of me," she said at length, "but--somehow--if you
had been comparatively poor--I should have been less--ashamed!"

And candor begot candor, as it generally will.

"Upon my word," he cried, "you make me sigh for the suburbs and six
hundred a year! But you shall know the worst. I meant you to know it
when I came in; then I changed my mind; but in for a penny, in for the
lot!"

He caught up the magazine which he had brought in with the sheaf of
newspapers, and he handed it to Rachel, open at an article quite
excellently illustrated for an English magazine.

"There," he cried, "there's a long screed about the wretched place,
before it came into my hands. But it's no use pretending it isn't quite
the place it was. I took over the whole thing--every stick outside and
in--and I've put in new drainage and the electric light."

His tone of regret was intentionally ludicrous. Had Rachel been
listening, she would once more have suspected a pose. But already she
was deep in the article in the two-year-old magazine, or rather in its
not inartistic illustrations.

"The House from the Tennis Lawn," "In the Kitchen Garden," "The
Drawing-room Door," "A Drawing-room Chimney-piece," "A Corner of the