'In essentials, Miss Buchanan,' he said, 'in the power of effort, endurance, devotion, I've no doubt that Thomas and I are equals, and that's all that ought to matter.' The others now were coming in, and Helen only shook her head, smiling on and quite unconvinced as she said, taking her chair, and reaching out her hand to shake Althea's, 'I'm afraid the inessentials matter most, then, in human intercourse.' From these fortuitous encounters Helen gathered the impression by degrees that though Mr.Kane might not find her satisfactory, he found her, in her incommunicativeness, quite as interesting as Thomas the footman.

He spent as much time in endeavouring to probe her as he did in endeavouring to probe Baines, even more time.

He would sit beside her garden-chair looking over scientific papers, making a remark now and then on their contents--contents as remote from Helen's comprehension as was the housing of the Berlin poor from Thomas's; and sometimes he would ask her a searching question, over the often frivolous answer to which he would carefully reflect.
'I gather, Miss Buchanan,' he said to her one afternoon, when they were thus together under the trees, 'I gather that the state of your health isn't good.

Would it be inadmissible on my part to ask you if there is anything really serious the matter with you ?' 'My state of health ?' said Helen, startled.

'My health is perfectly good.