l from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
degree to which it effaced her debts.

The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
orders without making the payment!

She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing
intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
kindness.

"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he is telling the same ones
still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she
hasn't the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for
her, and I'm sure she never pays when she loses."

Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
Rosedale's "tip," and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood therefore
that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
of the next "big rise."

The news of this event was re