Mr. Buckingham saw his card in Miss Vila's hands. He addressed himself to her:
"Possibly your servant misunderstood me. I asked for Mr. Wilding."
"She is a new servant," said Mrs. Martindale, and then added, with alacrity, as she seized the accident by its nearest horn, "her mistake was probably one of the ear. She thought you asked for Miss Vila." Mrs. Martindale had it in her to wave her hand toward the young lady, as if showing off wax-works, and to explain, "This is Miss Vila," but Mr. Buckingham was quick enough not to need the line upon line.
"I must beg Miss Vila's pardon. There certainly is a likeness in the names, if you spell it with a _we_."
"I will speak to Mr. Wilding," said Mrs. Martindale, jerking an eyeful of mysterious intelligence at Miss Vila and whisking out of the room.
"I hope you were just about to be beaten, Miss Vila," said Buckingham, "for I see I have spoiled the game."
She had said nothing, but she had said it with a singularly musical voice, and, after all, it is not the significant words but the significant tones which touch one.
"No. It is nothing," he repeated. "A game may always be interrupted, because it is not the conclusion but the playing which gives it any value. I suspect it is like the stories we read,--somebody comes in, and we lay the book down before we come to the end. It is no great matter if we never take it up again. We got our pleasure, not from knowing how things turned out, but from knowing things." He blushed a little as he said this. In fact, his own inchoate story came to his mind. Besides, Miss Vila had his card. Since she read so constantly, it was odds but she knew of him. He blushed a little more as this thought crossed his mind.
"Do you think so?" she asked, and her downcast eyes were suddenly up-turned in full, the look which he had often patiently watched for as he had seen her in the horse-car. "I find the end necessary. If I stop half-way I think I have done the story-teller an injustice. I have not given him the chance to tell me all he intended to tell me. He lets out the secret of his characters by degrees. He could justly say to me, 'You do not know the heroine; you have not seen her in that scene which is going to test her.'"