with it: "The personal
property--what you may call the cash--is mostly gone! Those that have
owned real estate--like the Rodmans and Fanny Burnaby--well, they've got
that still."

"I see." She continued to sit looking meditatively down at the rug. "I
suppose," she ventured, after long thinking, "that that's the money
we've been living on all these years?"

"Yes; in the main." He felt it useless to quibble or to try to extenuate
the facts.

"How many years would that be?"

"I'm not very sure; on and off, it's about ten since I began using some
of their money to--help out my income. Latterly--you may as well know
it--I haven't had any real income of my own at all."

"So that their money has been paying for--for all this."

Her hands made a confused little gesture, indicating the luxury of his
personal appointments and of the room.

He shrugged his shoulders and arched his eyebrows in a kind of protest,
which was nevertheless not denial. "W-well! If you choose to put it so!"

"And for me, too," she went on, looking at him now with a bewildered
opening of her large gray eyes--"for my visits, my clothes, my
maid--everything!"

"I don't see any need," he said, with a touch of peevishness, "for going
so terribly into detail."

"I don't see how it can be helped. It's so queer--and startling--to
think I've had so much that wasn't mine."

"You mustn't think it was deliberately planned--" he began, weakly.

"And now the suggestion is," she interrupted, "that Mr. Davenant should
pay for it. That seems to me to make it even worse than--than before."

"I confess I don't follow you there," he complained. "If he
doesn't--then I go to Singville."

"Wouldn't you rather?"

He raised himself stiffly into a sitting posture. "Would _you_?"

She did not hesitate in her reply. "Yes, papa. I _would_ rather--if I
were you."

"But since you're not me--since you are yourself--would you still rather
that I went to Singville?"

There was a little lift to her chin, a faint color in her face as she
replied: "I'd rather pay--however I did it. I'd rather pay--in any
way--than ask some one else to do it."

He fell back on the cushion of violet brocade. "So would I--if I had
only myself to think of. We're alike in that."

"Do you mean that you'd rather do it if it wasn't for me?"

"I've got to take everything into consideration. It's no use for me to
make bad worse by refusing a good offer. I must try to make the best of
a bad