“Well, it’s wonderful,” said he, in quite a natural voice.  “Of course, the greatest thing that will ever happen to me....  And yet—­it may seem strange to you—­but I’ve felt all along—­I’ve felt—­that something like this might probably happen any time.”

Moved as she was, Cally could have smiled at that.  But when she saw the intense honesty of his face, which still wore that half-startled yet shining look, the look of a man with a sudden secret all his own, she did not smile, and her own thought was given quite a new course.

“Perhaps you’re a nice sort of mind-reader,” said she, gently, “for you were right to feel that way, at least as far as my father is concerned.  I specially wanted you to know about that.  Papa has been planning for six years to put up a new building—­only last month he had arranged to spend quite a lot of money in repairs.  I just came to understand all this to-day.  The trouble has been,” said Cally, looking up at the old family enemy with no sense of hesitation or reluctance—­“I’ve always been too expensive, you see.  I’ve never left him any money to carry out his plans....”

She would not say anything about horse-leech’s daughters, not, of all things, wanting to embarrass him to-day.  But possibly his mind filled in a hiatus here, and there was no mistaking that what she said about her father impressed him profoundly.

“I ...  I really seem to have known.  You might call it a sort of—­of premonition—­if you wanted to ...  Though you’ll naturally not think I’ve acted that way.”

Mr. V.V. stood by a spindly table, carefully examining a small but costly vase, the property of Mr. Heth, of the Cheroot Works; and now he went on with a kind of diffident resolution, the air of one who gives a confidence with difficulty, but must do so now, for his honor.

“You may remember my telling you once that I was—­was sorry to write the factory articles you just mentioned.  The truth is I’ve hated to write them—­especially as to—­as to the Works....  It’s just the sort of thing I’ve wanted for a long time to write, too.  I had the argument thought out down to the bone.  Oh, they’re good....  I—­I was going to send the first lot to the ‘Chronicle’ this week....  And yet—­well, it’s been pulling against the grain somehow, every line of the way.  It seemed strange....  And now I see that I must have felt—­known—­all along....  But,” said the strange young man, setting down the vase and hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, “I—­I realize that this must sound most unconvincing to you.  Probably foolish.  No matter....”

But Cally felt by now that she understood him better than he understood himself.

“No, I think I understand,” said she.  “And if you hadn’t felt that way—­don’t you see?—­it never would have happened.”

He turned on her another strange look, at once intensely interested and intensely bewildered.  But she glanced away from it at once, and would give him no chance to ask her what that might mean.