is mother, and she'll protect him!"

"Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision.

"How you can LAUGH----" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a
soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha
really told him?"

"Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you
know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose
she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord Hubert--and there was some
story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?"

"He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed.

"Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and
she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their
tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity
comes they remember everything."

Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money
I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course."

"Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the
gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man--she knew
just what to tell him!"

In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her
friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good
temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she
had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other
people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon
as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial
statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own
thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented
in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was
certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself
gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's
words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she
herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen
imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of
poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to
consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to
have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction
of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure,
were trials as far