he girl's fierce ambitions. By that account
these favours to one so graceless were a woeful waste of time.

"Oh she has worked it all out; she has regarded the question in every
light," said Mrs. Pallant. "If she has made up her mind it's because she
sees what she can do."

"Do you mean that she has talked it over with you?"

My friend's wonderful face pitied my simplicity. "Lord! for what do you
take us? We don't talk things over to-day. We know each other's point of
view and only have to act. We observe the highest proprieties of speech.
We never for a moment name anything ugly--we only just go at it. We can
take definitions, which are awkward things, for granted."

"But in this case," I nevertheless urged, "the poor thing can't possibly
be aware of your point of view."

"No," she conceded--"that's because I haven't played fair. Of course she
couldn't expect I'd cheat. There ought to be honour among thieves. But
it was open to her to do the same."

"What do you mean by the same?"

"She might have fallen in love with a poor man. Then I should have been
'done.'"

"A rich one's better; he can do more," I replied with conviction.

At this she appeared to have, in the oddest way, a momentary revulsion.
"So you'd have reason to know if you had led the life that we have!
Never to have had really enough--I mean to do just the few simple things
we've wanted; never to have had the sinews of war, I suppose you'd call
them, the funds for a campaign; to have felt every day and every hour
the hard eternal pinch and found the question of dollars and cents--and
so horridly few of them--mixed up with every experience, with every
impulse: that DOES make one mercenary, does make money seem a good
beyond all others; which it's quite natural it should! And it's why
Linda's of the opinion that a fortune's always a fortune. She knows all
about that of your nephew, how it's invested, how it may be expected to
increase, exactly on what sort of footing it would enable her to live.
She has decided that it's enough, and enough is as good as a feast. She
thinks she could lead him by the nose, and I dare say she could. She'll
of course make him live in these countries; she hasn't the slightest
intention of casting her pearls--but basta!" said my friend. "I think
she has views upon London, because in England he can hunt and shoot, and
that will make him leave her more or less to herself."

"I don't know about his leaving her to herself,