lk of a kind she loathed,
but if Marian chose to be vulgar what was one to do? It made her think
of the Miss Condrips with renewed aversion. "I like the way you arrange
things--I like what you take for granted. If it's so easy for us to
marry men who want us to scatter gold, I wonder we any of us do
anything else. I don't see so many of them about, nor what interest I
might ever have for them. You live, my dear," she presently added, "in
a world of vain thoughts."

"Not so much as you, Kate; for I see what I see, and you can't turn it
off that way." The elder sister paused long enough for the younger's
face to show, in spite of superiority, an apprehension. "I'm not
talking of any man but Aunt Maud's man, nor of any money, even, if you
like, but Aunt Maud's money. I'm not talking of anything but your doing
what _she_ wants. You're wrong if you speak of anything that I want of
you; I want nothing but what she does. That's good enough for me!"--and
Marian's tone struck her companion as dreadful. "If I don't believe in
Merton Densher, I do at least in Mrs. Lowder."

"Your ideas are the more striking," Kate returned, "that they're the
same as papa's. I had them from him, you may be interested to know--and
with all the brilliancy you may imagine--yesterday."

Marian clearly was interested to know. "He has been to see you?"

"No, I went to him."

"Really?" Marian wondered. "For what purpose?"

"To tell him I'm ready to go to him."

Marian stared. "To leave Aunt Maud----?"

"For my father, yes."

She had fairly flushed, poor Mrs. Condrip, with horror. "You're
ready----?"

"So I told him. I couldn't tell him less."

"And, pray, could you tell him more?" Marian gasped in her distress.
"What in the world is he _to_ us? You bring out such a thing as that
this way?"

They faced each other--the tears were in Marian's eyes. Kate watched
them there a moment and then said: "I had thought it well over--over
and over. But you needn't feel injured. I'm not going. He won't have
me."

Her companion still panted--it took time to subside. "Well, _I_
wouldn't have you--wouldn't receive you at all, I can assure you--if he
had made you any other answer. I do feel injured--at your having been
willing. If you were to go to papa, my dear, you would have to stop
coming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture of
privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats
she could complacently make, could th