It's for me to find it!"

Suddenly she whirled round, and walked back to her mother.

"Mother, if you knew how little money was left, why wouldn't you let me
accept Miss Farnborough's offer at Christmas!"

For a moment Mrs Gifford's face expressed nothing but bewilderment.
Then comprehension dawned.

"You mean the school-mistress from London? What was it she suggested?
That you should go to her as a teacher? It was only a suggestion, so
far as I remember. She made no definite offer."

"Oh, yes, she did. She said that she had everlasting difficulty with
her French mistresses, and that I was the very person for whom she'd
been looking. Virtually French, yet really English in temperament. She
made me a definite offer of a hundred and ten pounds a year."

Mrs Gifford laughed, and shrugged her graceful shoulders. She appeared
to find the proposal supremely ridiculous, yet when people were without
money, the only sane course seemed to be to take what one could get.
Claire felt that she had not yet mastered the situation. There must be
something behind which she had still to grasp.

"Well, never mind the school for a moment, mother dear. Tell me what
_you_ thought of doing. You must have had some plan in your head all
these years while the money was dwindling away. Tell me your scheme,
then we can compare the two and see which is better."

Mrs Gifford bent her head over the table, and scribbled aimlessly with
a pen in which there was no ink. She made no answer in words, yet as
she waited the blood flamed suddenly over Claire's face, for it seemed
to her that she divined what was in her mother's mind. "I expected that
you would marry. I have done my best to educate you and give you a
happy youth. I expected that you would accept your first good offer,
and look after _me_!"

That was what a French mother would naturally say to her daughter; that
was what Claire Gifford believed that her own mother was saying to her
at that moment, and the accusation brought little of the revolt which an
English girl would have experienced. Claire had been educated at a
Parisian boarding school, and during the last three years had associated
almost entirely with French-speaking Andrees and Maries and Celestes,
who took for granted that their husbands should be chosen for them by
their parents. Claire had assisted at betrothal feasts, and played
_demoiselle d'honneur_ at subsequent weddings, and had witnessed an
astoni