suited to one another, although we might not have talked upon half-a-
dozen subjects.'

'I think the risk tremendous.'

'But there is just as much risk the other way. You would examine
your friend, catalogue him, sum up his beliefs, note his behaviour
under various experimental trials, and miserably fail, after all your
scientific investigation, to ascertain just the one important point
whether you loved him and could live with him. Your reason was not
meant for that kind of work. If a woman trusts in such matters to
the faculty by which, when she wishes to settle whether she is to
take this house or that, she puts the advantages of the larger back
kitchen on one side and the bigger front kitchen on the other, I pity
her.'

Mrs Hopgood at this moment came downstairs and asked when in the name
of fortune they meant to have the tea ready.



CHAPTER IV



Frank Palmer, the gentleman whom we saw descend from the coach, was
the eldest son of a wholesale and manufacturing chemist in London.
He was now about five-and-twenty, and having just been admitted as a
partner, he had begun, as the custom was in those days, to travel for
his firm. The elder Mr Palmer was a man of refinement, something