s: 'If my
wife should ask you for money, tell her my ideas on the subject.'"

A pause. She started up, crimson, her glance darting nervously this
way and that to avoid his. "Never mind. Really, it's of no
importance. Thank you--I'll get on very well--I'm sorry to have
troubled you--"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Siddall," he interposed, "but I think you'd best let
me finish."

She started to protest, she tried to move toward the door. Her
strength failed her, she sat down, waited, nervously clasping and
unclasping the costly, jewel-embroidered bag.

"He has explained to me, many times," continued Harding, "that he
believes women do not understand the value of money and ought not to be
trusted with it. He proposes to provide everything for you, every
comfort and luxury--I am using his own language, Mrs. Siddall--and he
has open accounts at the principal shops in every city where you will
go--New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Paris, London, Rome. He says
you are at liberty to get practically anything you please at these
shops, and he will pay the bills. He thus entirely spares you the
necessity of ever spending any money. Should you see anything you wish
at some shop where he has no account, you can have it sent collect, and
I or my assistant, Mr. Drawl, will settle for it. All he asks is that
you use discretion in this freedom. He says it would be extremely
painful to him to have to withdraw it."

Harding had pronounced this long speech in a dry monotonous voice, like
one reading mechanically from a dull book. As Mildred listened, her
thoughts began to whirl about the central idea until she fell into a
kind of stupor. When he finished she was staring vacantly at the bag
in her lap--the bag she was holding open wide.

Harding continued: "He also instructed me to say something about his
former--his experiences. The first Mrs. Siddall he married when he was
very young and poor. As he grew rich, she became madly extravagant.
And as they had started on a basis on which she had free access to his
money he could not check her. The result, finally, was a succession of
bitter quarrels, and they were about to divorce when she died. He made
the second Mrs. Siddall an allowance, a liberal allowance. Her follies
compelled him to withdraw it. She resorted to underhanded means to get
money from him without his knowing it. He detected the fraud. After a
series of disagreeable incidents she committed the indiscretion whi