honourable citizen. His answer to her reproaches pleaded the
necessitousness of his purchases and expenditure: a capital plea; and
Mrs. Credit was requested by him, in a courteous manner, to drive
her pen the faster, so that she might wax to a corresponding size and
satisfy the world's idea of fitness in couples. She would have costly
furniture, 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