,
because it pleased her taste; and a French cook, for a like reason, in
justice to her guests; and trained servants; and her tribe of pensioners;
flowers she would have profuse and fresh at her windows and over the
rooms; and the pictures and engravings on the walls were (always for the
good reason mentioned) choice ones; and she had a love of old lace, she
loved colours as she loved cheerfulness, and silks, and satin hangings,
Indian ivory carvings, countless mirrors, Oriental woods, chairs and
desks with some feature or a flourish in them, delicate tables with
antelope legs, of approved workmanship in the chronology of European
upholstery, and marble clocks of cunning device to symbol Time,
mantelpiece decorations, illustrated editions of her favourite authors;
her bed-chambers, too, gave the nest for sleep a dainty cosiness in
aerial draperies. Hence, more or less directly, the peccant bills. Credit
was reduced to reckon to a nicety the amount she could rely on
positively: her fixed income from her investments and the letting of The
Crossways: the days of half-yearly payments that would magnify her to
some proportions beside the alarming growth of her partner, who was proud
of it, and referred her to the treasures she could summon with her pen,
at a murmur of dissatisfaction. His compliments were sincere; they were
seductive. He assured her that she had struck a rich vein in an
inexhaustible mine; by writing only a very little faster she could double
her income; counting a broader popularity, treble it; and so on a tide of
success down the widening river to a sea sheer golden. Behold how it
sparkles! Are we then to stint our winged hours of youth for want of
courage to realize the riches we can command? Debit was eloquent, he was
unanswerable.

Another calculator, an accustomed and lamentably-scrupulous
arithmetician, had been at work for some time upon a speculative summing
of the outlay of Diana's establishment, as to its chances of swamping the
income. Redworth could guess pretty closely the cost of a house hold, if
his care for the holder set him venturing on aver ages. He knew nothing
of her ten per cent. investment and considered her fixed income a
beggarly regiment to marshal against the invader. He fancied however, in
his ignorance of literary profits, that a popular writer, selling several
editions, had come to an El Dorado. There was the mine. It required a
diligent worker. Diana was often struck by hearin