magical! Good people talk of
greater gifts that you may get if you are good and self-denying, and
have a dull time, but they are all in the clouds, and money is so
delightfully, so tangibly real!" She glanced round the beautiful room,
then down to the little ringed hand stretched out to the fire; she moved
her fingers to and fro, so that the flames might wake the sparkle of
gems, and heaved a sigh of luxurious content. "I used to long for
things that I could not have; now I never need to long, for they are
mine as soon as I think of them! How can one help being happy, when one
has everything one wants?"

"There are some things that money cannot buy." Once more Meriel could
not resist echoing the truism of centuries, but Claudia shook her head
with laughing contradiction.

"Rubbish! Don't you believe it! Anyway, money can buy such good
imitations that you can't tell them from real! It can do more than
that. It--" She paused, with a sudden intake of breath, and her voice
sank to a deeper note: "_It can cover things up_!"

Meriel's eyes shot a curious glance. Through the evening she had
studied the husband and wife with a puzzled scrutiny, and now, at the
end of it, she felt as far as ever from solving the mystery which she
sensed as lying beneath the surface. Claudia's manner to her husband
was gay and charming, but in the midst of her lightest badinage the
friend of her youth had discerned an effort, a strain, an almost painful
endeavour to win his approval.

And he? Nothing could be more marked than the man's care for his
beautiful wife. Why was it that through all his elaborate attentions
there lurked a cold, a sinister effect?

"But what can you have that you wish to cover, Claudia?" Meriel
inquired. "By your own confession, you have only to wish and it is
yours, and you have a devoted husband who looks after you as if you were
the most fragile of hothouse flowers. It's absurd, you know, for you
were always as strong as a horse! That transparent look of yours is a
delusion; but how upset he seemed, poor man, because your cheek was just
a little inflamed to-night."

Claudia straightened herself; an involuntary shiver shook her slight
form. Her voice had a nervous ring:

"It's nothing--it's nothing!" she cried. "Just spring, and these horrid
east winds. But it won't go! I've tried a dozen things; and he hates
it--he hates any fuss or illness! I must never be ill, or have anything
that spo