ing me, but I'll show him up if it comes
to that--and, at any rate, I'm on the way to discoveries myself, and I
bet I'll teach him some things in his profession yet that will make
him sit up--things he doesn't suspect, clever and all as he is."

Beth knew nothing of the things to which Dan alluded, and therefore
missed the drift of this tirade; but the whole tone of it was so
offensive to her that she gathered up her books and papers and left
the room. Silence and flight were her weapons of defence in those
days.

CHAPTER XL

There was a gap of six months between that last visit of Sir George
Galbraith's and the next, and in the interval Beth had worked hard,
reading and re-reading the books he had lent her, writing, and perhaps
most important of all, reflecting, as she sat in her secret chamber,
busy with the beautiful embroideries which were to pay off that
dreadful debt. She had made seven pounds by this time, and Aunt Grace
Mary had sent her five for a present surreptitiously, advising her to
keep it herself and say nothing about it--Aunt Grace Mary knew what
husbands were. Beth smiled as she read the letter. She, too, was
beginning to know what husbands are--husbands of the Uncle James kind.
She added the five pounds to her secret hoard, and thanked goodness
that the sum was mounting up, little by little.

But she wished Sir George would return. He was a busy man, and lived
at the other side of the county, so that she could not expect him to
come to Slane on her account; but surely something more important
would bring him eventually, and then she might hope to see him. She
knew he would not desert her. And she had some manuscript ready to
confide to him now if he should repeat his offer; but she was too
diffident to send it to him except at his special request.

She was all energy now that the possibility of making a career for
herself had been presented to her, but it was the quietly restrained
energy of a strong nature. She never supposed that she could practise
a profession without learning it, and she was prepared to serve a long
apprenticeship to letters if necessary. She meant to write and write
and write until she acquired power of expression. About what she
should have to express she never troubled herself. It was the need to
express what was in her that had set her to work. She would never have
to sit at a writing-table with a pen in her hand waiting for ideas to
come. She had discovered by a