Louis as he gazed was enchanted.  This was not Miss Fleckring, the companion and household help of Mrs. Maldon, but a nymph, a fay, the universal symbol of his highest desire....  He would have been happy to kiss the glinting steel buckle, so feminine, so provocative, so coy.  The tight rounded line of the waist, every bend of the fingers, the fall of the eye-lashes—­all were exquisite and precious to him after the harsh, unsatisfying, desolating masculinity of Horrocleave’s.  This was the divine reward of Horrocleave’s, the sole reason of Horrocleave’s.  Horrocleave’s only existed in order that this might exist and be maintained amid cushions and the softness of calm and sequestered interiors, waiting for ever in acquiescence for the arrival of manful doers from Horrocleave’s.  The magnificent pride of male youth animated Louis.  He had not a care in the world.  Even his long-unpaid tailor’s bill was magically abolished.  He was an embodiment of exulting hope and fine aspirations.

Rachel stirred, dimly aware of the invasion.  And Louis, actuated by the most delicate regard for her sensitive modesty, vanished back for a moment into the hall, until she should have fitted herself for his beholding.

Mrs. Tams had come from somewhere into the hall.  She was munching a square of bread and cold bacon, and she curtsied, exclaiming—­

“It’s never Mester Fores!  That’s twice her’s been woke up this day!”

“Who’s there?” Rachel called out, and her voice had the breaking, bewildered softness of a woman’s in the dark, emerging from a dream.

“Sorry!  Sorry!” said Louis, behind the door.

“It’s all right,” she reassured him.

He returned to the room.  She was sitting upright on the sofa, her arms a little extended and the tips of her fingers touching the sofa.  The coil of her hair had been arranged.  The romance of the exciting night still clung to her, for Louis; but what chiefly seduced him was the mingling in her mien of soft confusion and candid, sturdy honesty and dependableness.  He felt that here was not only a ravishing charm, but a source of moral strength from which he could draw inexhaustibly that which he had had a slight suspicion he lacked.  He felt that here was joy and salvation united, and it seemed too good to be true.  Strange that when she greeted him at the door-step on the previous evening, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time; and again later, in the kitchen, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time; and again, still later, in the sudden crisis at his bedroom door, he had imagined that she was revealing herself to him for the first time.  For now he perceived that he had never really seen her before; and he was astounded and awed.

“Auntie still on the up-grade?” he inquired, using all his own charm.  He guessed, of course, that Mrs. Maldon must be still better, and he was very glad, although, if she recovered, it would be she and not himself that he had deprived of bank-notes.