la, appalled by the expression of her husband's face.
"Theodore has customers who spend two thousand a year with her."

"Very laudable extravagance, if they are wives of millionaires, and
have their silver-mines, or cotton-mills, or oil-wells to maintain
them. But that the widow of a Hampshire squire, a lady who six years
hence will have to exist upon a pittance, should run up such a bill as
this is to my mind an act of folly that is almost criminal. From this
moment I abandon all my ideas of nursing your estate, of providing
comfortably for our future. Henceforward we must drift towards
insolvency, like other people. It would be worse than useless for me to
go on racking my brains in the endeavour to secure a given result, when
behind my back your thoughtless extravagance is stultifying all my
efforts."

Here Mrs. Winstanley dissolved into tears.

"Oh Conrad! How can you say such cruel things?" she sobbed. "I go
behind your back! I stultify you! When I have allowed myself to be
ruled and governed in everything! When I have even parted with my only
child to please you!"

"Not till your only child had tried to set the house on fire."

"Indeed, Conrad, you are mistaken there. She never meant it."

"I know nothing about her meaning," said the Captain moodily. "She did
it."

"It is too cruel, after all my sacrifices, that I should be called
extravagant--and foolish--and criminal. I have only dressed as a lady
ought to dress--out of mere self-respect. Dear Edward always liked to
see me look nice. He never said an unkind word about my bills. It is a
sad--sad change for me."

"Your future will be a sadder change, if you go on in the way you are
going," retorted the Captain. "Let me see: your income, after Violet
comes of age, is to fifteen hundred a year. You have been spending six
hundred a year upon millinery. That leaves nine hundred for everything
else--stable, garden, coals, taxes, servants' wages, wine--to say
nothing of such trifling claims as butcher and baker, and the rest of
it. You will have to manage with wonderful cleverness to make both ends
meet."

"I am sure I would sacrifice anything rather than live unhappily with
you, Conrad," Mrs. Winstanley murmured piteously, drinking much strong
tea in her agitation, the cup shaking in her poor little white weak
hand. "Nothing could be so dreadful to me as to live on bad terms with
you. I have surrendered so much for your love, Conrad. What would
become of me