But I don't see, you must let me say, the importance or the connexion--" "Of my having made the purchase where you failed of it ?" She had quickly taken him up; but she had, with her eyes on him once more, another drop into the order of her thoughts, to which, through whatever he might say, she was still adhering.

"It's not my having gone into the place, at the end of four years, that makes the strangeness of the coincidence; for don't such chances as that, in London, easily occur?
The strangeness," she lucidly said, "is in what my purchase was to represent to me after I had got it home; which value came," she explained, "from the wonder of my having found such a friend." "'Such a friend' ?" As a wonder, assuredly, her husband could but take it.
"As the little man in the shop.

He did for me more than he knew--I owe it to him.

He took an interest in me," Maggie said; "and, taking that interest, he recalled your visit, he remembered you and spoke of you to me." On which the Prince passed the comment of a sceptical smile.

"Ah but, my dear, if extraordinary things come from people's taking an interest in you--" "My life in that case," she asked, "must be very agitated?
Well, he liked me, I mean--very particularly.