is a meddlesome _piece_!--that's
what I think! Does he suppose that after waiting all this time for the
only man in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on
a stretch and send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those
thrilly thrills I've always longed for--does he suppose that now
I'm going to pay any attention to his silly notions about wills and
things? He's abominably selfish! I shan't!"

Margaret moved across the room, shimmering, rustling, glittering like
a fairy in a pantomime. Then, to consider matters at greater ease, she
curled up on a divan in much the attitude of a tiny Cleopatra riding
at anchor on a carpeted Cydnus.

"Billy thinks I want the money--bless his boots! He thinks I'm a
stuck-up, grasping, purse-proud little pig, and he has every right
to think so after the way I talked to him, though he ought to have
realised I was in a temper about Kathleen Saumarez and have paid no
attention to what I said. And he actually attempted to reason with
me! If he'd had _any_ consideration for my feelings, he'd have simply
smacked me and made me behave--however, he's a man, and all men are
selfish, and _she's_ a skinny old thing, and I _never_ had any use for
her. Bother her lectures! I never understood a word of them, and I
don't believe she does, either. Women's clubs are _all_ silly, and I
think the women who belong to them are _all_ bold-faced jigs! If
they had any sense, they'd stay at home and take care of the babies,
instead of messing with philanthropy, and education, and theosophy,
and anything else that they can't make head or tail of. And they call
that being cultured! Culture!--I hate the word! I don't want to be
cultured--I want to be happy."

This, you will observe, was, in effect, a sweeping recantation of
every ideal Margaret had ever boasted. But Love is a canny pedagogue,
and of late he had instructed Miss Hugonin in a variety of matters.

"Before God, loving you as I do, I wouldn't marry you for all the
wealth in the world," she repeated, with a little shiver. "Even in his
delirium he said that. But I _know_ now that he loves me. And I know
that I adore him. And if this were a sensible world, I'd walk right in
there and explain things and ask him to marry me, and then it wouldn't
matter in the least who had the money. But I can't, because it
wouldn't be proper. Bother propriety!--but bothering it doesn't do
any good. As long as I have the money, Billy will never come near m