"I guess that most of you don't, then," he decided. "Well, well, how a fellow makes mistakes! One of those quiet buildings with columns, now, such as I tore down, I suppose would have been just the thing?"
"Yes," she said. "But Mr. Ellis, you mustn't think——"
He smiled. "Never mind, Miss Blanchard. You would say something nice, I'm sure, but the mischief's done; the building's there, ain't it?"
"I wish——" she began.
"And really I'm obliged to you," he went on. "Because I might have built a house here just like the other. Now we'll have it right—if I decide to build here at all."
"Then you've not made up your mind?"
"Almost," he said. "The bargain's all but closed. Only it seems so useless, for a bachelor." He looked at her a moment. "Give me your advice," he begged. "Sometimes I think I'm doing the foolish thing."
"Why, Mr. Ellis, what can I—and it's not my affair."
"Make it your affair!" he urged. "This is very important to me. I don't want to sicken these people by crowding in; you saw what Miss Fenno thought of me this afternoon. But if there is any chance for me—what do you say?"
It was the mention of Miss Fenno that did it. She sprang up in Judith's consciousness, clothed in her armour of correctness—proper, prim, and stupid. And in Judith was roused wrath against this type of her life, against her class and its narrowness. She obeyed her impulse, and turned a quickening glance on him.