the interior, watched it with a certain sense of artistic pleasure. It was a dear old house, Kingsmead, and with money—oh, yes, oh, yes, money! When Tommy was grown, what kind of a man would he be? She shuddered.

And there, staring at her across a table on which he was leaning to perfect his not quite faultless balance, stood Pontefract, money, so far as she was concerned, personified.

He owned mines in Cornwall, a highly successful motor-factory, a big London newspaper, a house in Grosvenor Square, and Pomfret Abbey.

Also he owned an ever-thirsting palate, a fat red neck, red-rimmed eyes, and a bald head.

She looked at him with the absent-minded deliberation that so annoyed many people. He was rather awful in many ways, but he was a kind man, his temper was good, and he would doubtless be an amiable, manageable husband.

"Brigit,—let's go out, I,—there is something I want to tell you." His voice shook a little with real emotion, and though he had undoubtedly drunk more than was good for him, there was about the man a certain dignity, compounded of his breeding, his respect for her, and his sincerity.

She did not move, and her small, narrow face went white. He would take her—wherever she asked him; she would be able to fly away from her mother and her mother's friends. After a long pause, which he bore well, she bowed her head slowly. "Yes, I will get a scarf," and leaving him she left the room. Her face was set and a little sullen as she came back with a long silk scarf on her arm. Carron met her near the door. "Made up your mind, have you?" he asked, with deliberate insolence. "Better wait till to-morrow, my dear—he's half drunk."

She hated Carron. Hated him with an intensity that few women know. At that moment she would have liked to kill him. But knowing a better weapon, and rejoicing in her cruelty, she used it. "Poor old Gerald," she said, smiling at him, "no man over fifty can afford the luxury of jealousy."

Then she joined Pontefract.

He made his proposal succinctly and well, and without any confusion she accepted him. "No—you may not kiss me to-night," she added. "You may come for that—to-morrow. Now would you mind going? I—I want to be alone."

Quite humbly, hardly daring to believe in his good fortune, he left her, and she wandered aimlessly over the grass towards the 

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