that."

"There is no other scheme! That's so like a woman;--to quarrel with
the only plan that is practicable."

"I do not think you ought to take Alice's money."

"My dear Kate, you must allow me to be the best judge of what I ought
to do, and what I ought not to do. Alice herself understands the
matter perfectly. She knows that I cannot obtain this position, which
is as desirable for her as it is for me--"

"And for me as much as for either," said Kate, interrupting him.

"Very well. Alice, I say, knows that I cannot do this without money,
and has offered the assistance which I want. I would rather that you
should tell her how much I want, and that I want it now, than that I
should do so. That is all. If you are half the woman that I take you
to be, you will understand this well enough."

Kate did understand it well enough. She was quite awake to the fact
that her brother was ashamed of the thing he was about to do,--so
much ashamed of it that he was desirous of using her voice instead of
his own. "I want you to write to her quite at once," he continued;
"since you seem to think that it is not worth while to take the
trouble of a journey to London."

"There is no question about the trouble," said Kate. "I would walk to
London to get the money for you, if that were all."

"Do you think that Alice will refuse to lend it me?" said he, looking
into her face.

"I am sure that she would not, but I think that you ought not to take
it from her. There seems to me to be something sacred about property
that belongs to the girl you are going to marry."

"If there is anything on earth I hate," said George, walking about
the room, "it is romance. If you keep it for reading in your bedroom,
it's all very well for those who like it, but when it comes to be
mixed up with one's business it plays the devil. If you would only
sift what you have said, you would see what nonsense it is. Alice and
I are to be man and wife. All our interests, and all our money, and
our station in life, whatever it may be, are to be joint property.
And yet she is the last person in the world to whom I ought to go for
money to improve her prospects as well as my own. That's what you
call delicacy. I call it infernal nonsense."

"I tell you what I'll do, George. I'll ask Aunt Greenow to lend you
the money,--or to lend it to me."

"I don't believe she'd give me a shilling. Moreover, I want it quite
immediately, and the time taken up in letter-writ