He stalked through Hynds House with slitted eyes and bristling mustache—­business of silent sleuth on the trail of the furniture-fakir!  He’d pause at each door and with an eagle glance take a comprehensive survey; then, defensively, offensively, he examined things in detail.  From our rambling attics to our vast and cavernous cellars did he go; and not a word crossed his lips until he had completed this conandoyley examination.  Then: 

“Telegraph form if you have one, please,” he requested briefly.  “I wish to wire for my car.  Put Johnson in the room next mine.  Johnson’s my secretary.”  He looked at Alicia, reflectively.  “Amiable ass, Johnson,” he volunteered.  Then he went over to the tiled fireplace—­we were in the library—­and bent worshipfully before it.

“The finest bit of tile-work on this continent,” he said, in a hushed voice.  “Absolutely perfect.  And it belongs to a woman named Smith!”

“We know just how you feel about it,” Alicia told him sympathetically, while The Author turned red to his ears.  “I have often felt like that myself, when something I particularly wanted was bought by somebody I was sure couldn’t properly appreciate it.  I dare say I was mistaken,” admitted Alicia, “just as mistaken as you are now in thinking that Sophy and I aren’t worthy of those tiles.  We are—­all the more so because we never before had anything like them.”

The spoiled darling of success looked at us intently; and a most curious change came over his clever, bad-tempered face.  His eyes are as bright as ice, and have somewhat the same cold light in them.  Now a thaw set in and melted them, and a mottled red spread over his sallow cheeks.

“Miss Gaines,” he said, abruptly, “your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—­Miss Smith, I apologize.”  And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily:  “This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—­almost too good to be true and too true to be good.  Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me in on it, eh?”

“Because we knew it was the real thing,” Alicia replied, truthfully.

“Do you know,”—­The Author was plainly pleased—­“that that is one of the very nicest things that’s ever been said to me?  Because I really do know above a bit about genuine stuff.”

“It must be a great relief to you to hear something pleasant about yourself that is also something true,” I said with sympathy.  The Author grinned like a hyena, and Alicia giggled.  “Because you must be bored to extinction, having to listen to all sorts of people ascribe to you all sorts of virtues that no one man could possibly possess and remain human.”  I was remembering some of the fulsome flubdub I’d read about him.

“Hark to her!” grinned The Author.  “What! you don’t believe all the nice things you’ve read about me?”

“I do not.”