“I’ve got it!” he cried, “the very thing—­why didn’t.  I think of it?  Dicky Farnham’s house, or rather his wife’s house.  I’ll get it straight after a while,—­she isn’t his wife any more, you know; she married Eustace Rindge last month.  That’s the reason it’s for rent.  Dicky says he’ll never get married again—­you bet!  They planned it together, laid the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge.  I saw her before she sailed, and she begged me to rent it.  But it isn’t furnished.”

“I might look at it,” said Honora, dubiously.

“I’m sure it will just suit you,” he declared with enthusiasm.  “It’s a real find.  We’ll drive around by the office and get the keys.”

The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little oak-panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real estate agent—­a most difficult thing to remember.

Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the entire width of the house.  Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood.  Behind the little hall a cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room.  And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the sideboard for such a setting.

On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence.  Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need not penetrate.  The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert thought extremely reasonable.

“Eight thousand dollars!” As she stood with her back turned, looking out on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot for that exact sum.  And as cashier of Mr. Isham’s bank, he did not earn so much in a year.

She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the task remained, of getting Howard into it.  In the consideration of this most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious.  She was startled out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the part of Mr. Cuthbert.

“Oh, he’ll come round all right, when he sees the house,” that young gentleman declared.

Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in spite of herself.  It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he became; before one knew it, an accomplice.  Had he not poured out to Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial troubles?