up. I was asking Mr Judge about them
yesterday. He says I might get between two and three hundred pounds.
They were worth a thousand, years ago."

Claire brightened with the quick relief of youth. Two or three hundred
English pounds were a considerable improvement on a debit account. With
two or three hundred pounds much might yet be done. Thousands of people
had built up great fortunes on smaller foundations. In a vague,
indefinite fashion she determined to devote these last pounds to
settling herself in some business, which would ensure a speedy and
generous return. School teaching was plainly out of the question, since
two gentlewomen could not exist on a hundred and ten pounds a year. She
must think of something quicker, more lucrative.

All through dinner that evening Claire debated her future vocation as
she sat by her mother's side, halfway down the long dining-table which
to English eyes appeared so bare and unattractive, but which was yet
supplied with the most appetising of food. Claire's eyes were
accustomed to the lack of pretty detail; she had quite an affection for
the Pension which stood for home in her migratory life, and a real love
for Madame Dupre, the cheery, kindly, most capable proprietor. Such of
the _pensionnaires_ as were not purely birds of passage she regarded as
friends rather than acquaintances; the only person in the room to whom
she felt any antagonism was Mr Judge himself, but unfortunately he was
the one of all others whom she was expected to like best.

As she ate her salad and broke fragments of delicious crusty roll,
Claire threw furtive glances across the table at the man who for the
last weeks had exercised so disturbing an element in her life. Was it
six weeks or two months, since she and her mother had first made his
acquaintance at the tennis club at which they spent so many of their
afternoons? Claire had noticed that a new man had been present on that
occasion, had bestowed on him one critical glance, decided with youthful
arrogance: "Oh, quite old!" and promptly forgotten his existence, until
an hour later, when, as she was sitting in the pavilion enjoying the
luxury of a real English tea, the strange man and her mother had entered
side by side. Claire summoned in imagination the picture of her mother
as she had looked at that moment, slim and graceful in the simplest of
white dresses, an untrimmed linen hat shading her charming face. She
looked about twenty-f