of girl to do that?" asked Eve, waking to curiosity.

"I know nothing about her, except from Narramore's sleepy talk. Rather
an arrogant beauty, according to him. He told me a story of how, when
he was calling upon her, she begged him to ring the bell for something
or other, and he was so slow in getting up that she went and rang it
herself. 'Her own fault,' he said; 'she asked me to sit on a chair with
a seat some six inches above the ground, and how can a man hurry up
from a thing of that sort?'"

"He must be a strange man. Of course he doesn't care anything about
Miss Birching."

"But I think he does, in his way."

"How did he ever get on at all in business?"

"Oh, he's one of the lucky men." Hilliard replied, with a touch of
good-natured bitterness. "He never exerted himself; good things fell
into his mouth. People got to like him--that's one explanation, no
doubt."

"Don't you think he may have more energy than you imagine?"

"It's possible. I have sometimes wondered."

"What sort of life does he lead? Has he many friends I mean?"

"Very few. I should doubt whether there's anyone he talks with as he
does with me. He'll never get much good out of his money; but if he
fell into real poverty--poverty like mine--it would kill him. I know he
looks at me as an astonishing creature, and marvels that I don't buy a
good dose of chloral and have done with it."

Eve did not join in his laugh.

"I can't bear to hear you speak of your poverty," she said in an
undertone. "You remind me that I am the cause of it."

"Good Heavens! As if I should mention it if I were capable of such a
thought!"

"But it's the fact," she persisted, with something like irritation.
"But for me, you would have gone into the architect's office with
enough to live upon comfortably for a time."

"That's altogether unlikely," Hilliard declared. "But for you, it's
improbable that I should have gone to Birching's at all. At this moment
I should be spending my money in idleness, and, in the end, should have
gone back to what I did before. You have given me a start in a new
life."

This, and much more of the same tenor, failed to bring a light upon
Eve's countenance. At length she asked suddenly, with a defiant
bluntness----

"Have you ever thought what sort of a wife I am likely to make?"

Hilliard tried to laugh, but was disagreeably impressed by her words
and the look that accompanied them.

"I have thought about it, to be sure," he