position on a daily paper and his mother's little
property had been disposed of to advantage, so that he had several
thousand in bank now. To him, with his small needs and quiet tastes,
this seemed like wealth.

"Oh, why will you force me to such brutal plainness!" exclaimed Mrs.
Lamont impatiently. "Really this interview will make me ill."

"It may indeed," said Steve.

He had no thought of sarcasm.

"Mr. Loveland, this is a business matter. We must understand each
other. You have property, I suppose?"

"Not now; it was sold."

"What do you own, may I ask? Oh, isn't it fearful to have to talk so!
But I must lead you to see things clearly."

"I have forty-five hundred dollars in bank and a good situation," said
Steve, with a feeling that he was turning his life inside out under a
stranger's gaze, and had returned to barbarism and was buying Nannie.

"Bringing you what, may I ask?"

"A hundred and twenty-five a month."

Mrs. Lamont gave a short laugh.

"Why, my dear sir--excuse me, but that would not suffice to keep
Nannie's carriage, let alone herself."

"Must she have a carriage?" asked Steve with a lengthening face.

"As a matter of course! Would you expect her to walk?"

Several things flashed through Steve's bewildered brain. Until to-day
he had always met Nannie in her own or some other parlor. She had
walked to-day, it is true, but perhaps she ought not to have done so.
He remembered that when he saw her feet as she was paddling in the
brook he thought them wonderfully small. He also recalled the fact
that Chinese women of rank have very small feet and cannot walk;
possibly Nannie was in a similar predicament.

"Is she deformed?" he gasped.

And then Mrs. Lamont put her handkerchief to her face and wept for
vexation.

Meanwhile Steve sat there, bewildered and distressed. He had come to
expect this sort of conduct from women in general, but it was
harrowing. His poor invalid mother often wept; Mary had cried now and
then, poor worn-out girl; and last week, when he was at her house,
even Constance had burst into tears when Randolph tried to explain
something to her; Nannie had cried that day, and now Mrs. Lamont was
weeping. No doubt it was a sort of melancholy punctuation mark in
vogue with the sex.

"Evidently we speak different languages, and it is an almost hopeless
task to try to explain," said the lady at length; "but Nannie's
interests are at stake, and I must attempt it."

She knew