"We fancy that we have some ideas that way, also," he told her. "Wherein do we fail most, from your English point of view?"

"In matters of sex," the Duchess replied coolly. "You know so much more about lobster Newburg than you do about women. I suppose it is all this strenuous money-getting that is responsible for your ignorance. No one over here, you see, tries for anything very much."

"You certainly all live in a more enervating atmosphere," David admitted.

"Tell me about your younger days?" she demanded.

"There is nothing to tell in the least interesting," he assured her. "My people were poor. I was sent to Harvard with great difficulty by a relative who kept a boot store. I became a clerk in a railway office, took a fancy to the work and planned out some schemes--which came off."

"How much money have you, in plain English?" she asked.

"About four millions," he answered.

"And what are you going to do with it?"

"Buy an estate, for one thing," he replied. "Fortunately, I am very fond of shooting and riding, so I suppose I shall amuse myself."

"Are those your only resources?" she enquired, with a faint smile.

"I may marry."

"Come, this gets more interesting! Any lady in your mind yet?"

"None whatever," he assured her, with almost exaggerated firmness.

"You'd better give yourself a few years first and then let me choose for you," she suggested. "I know just the type--unless you change."

"And why should I change?"

"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present something bottled up in you. I do not know what it is, and if I asked you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever that may be. Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years' struggle of yours? Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for generous life, Mr. Thain.""You are a very observant person."
"Trust me, then, and tell me your secret 

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