"It's something to hear a heavy step about the house, and to see the
carpet kicked crooked," she said sometimes. Her mother would shake her
hand gently and smile.

She shook her head and smiled in precisely the same way now. Mr.
Muller, who had grown excited as he talked, felt a wave of insipid
propriety wash over his emotions, bringing them to a dead level.

"However the matter may conclude," said Mrs. Guinness pleasantly, "why
should you and I lose our self-control, Mr. Muller? Now, why should
we? Ah?"

There was something numbing in the very note of prolonged
interrogation. The folds of Mrs. Guinness's glossy alpaca lay calmly
over her plump breast; her colorless hair (both her own and the
switch) rolled and rose high above her head; her round cheeks were
unchanging pink, her light eyes steady; the surprised lift of those
flaxen eyelashes had made many a man ashamed of his emotions and his
slipshod grammar together.

Mr. Muller was humbled, he did not know why. "It is practical enough,
I suppose," he said irritably, "to ask what Catharine herself thinks
of marriage with me?"

"You never tried to discover for yourself?" with an attempt at roguish
shrewdness.

"No, upon my honor, no!" The little man fairly lost his breath in his
haste. "I have a diffidence in speaking to her."