He tramped up and down the room, talking rapidly, brandishing his arms in a characteristically ungraceful, but expressive way.
"Why don't you write an article about it? I'll make my chief print it in one of his decent papers. Not that—not that," he broke off stammering hopelessly, "Round the Fire isn't very good in its way, you know—but I mean in Cosmos or The Jupiter."
Mrs. Walbridge laughed softly. "Don't apologise for Round the Fire," she said. "I think I know exactly what it is."
He sat down again. The wind was whipping against the window with a delightful crackling noise. The corner by the homely hearth in the dim, inexpressive drawing-room was very pleasant in its way, and he liked, he very greatly liked, the old-fashioned lady in the shabby grey gown—the lady whom, if he had to stop the stars in their courses to accomplish it, was going to be his mother-in-law. He had always liked Mrs. Walbridge; he had always known that she held qualities that in a mother-in-law would be shining ones, but she had a personality a little too like this drawing-room of hers, too like the old mirror that hung over the mantelpiece and was a little cloudy, a little obscure, and now, behold, something had breathed on the mirror and it had cleared! Like a flash he saw the future. Himself England's greatest newspaper king, in a great, fine, romantic old house somewhere—St. James's Square for choice, failing that, Manchester Square might do—and by his side was his lovely little blackest white girl, and beside her, in subdued grey velvet and lace, the perfect mother-in-law, perfect because, not only had she been capable of producing a wife fit for the greatest man in England, and of being herself gently and quietly and modestly impressive, but she possessed that great blessing to a man in the position that he would be in, a keenly critical mind, and the mind would be, he felt, in a way his, because he had discovered it. He was sure that no one in her household or among her friends even suspected Mrs. Walbridge of such an astonishing possession.
"Look here," he said at the end of half an hour or so, when they had discussed Mr. Collier's rather putrescent masterpiece pretty thoroughly, "I suppose Grisel's told you that I mean to marry her?"
"She's told me that you'd asked her."
"Oh, that's nothing," he waved his hand impatiently, "asking her, I mean. I have asked her two or three times, just for the sake of form, you know. But she's got to do it sooner or later. I'm in no hurry."
"Dear me," murmured his hostess, a little frightened by the novelty of his point of view.
"Yes. You mustn't think me cheeky or—dashing, you know," he protested gravely. "I'm not really. I only mention it now to you so that you would understand what I'm going to say."
"Yes?" She spoke very gently, and her eyes were kind and benign.