vacity in check.

"And you think I can earn that?"

Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
unrestrained.

He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the
cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money--that
was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to
want it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very
expensively--how expensively it was his business to know. Then he took
in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of
high art--the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final
luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and
the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general effect.

What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached
by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the
task he offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had
never heard answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the
fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic
interest could be reached much more readily by the promise of large
emolument,--and he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even
while he recognized the value of the discovery.

But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of
very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able
to penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she
spoke up in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she
said:

"No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains."

"See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
papers."

"You say that? You know that?"

"On my honour, Miss Strange."

Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.

"Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
Later I have a tea and two party calls to make."

Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of
his extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that on