ad been more like a prison than a home, to marry a
handsome young artist who had been painting in the neighbourhood during
the summer months; a handsome merry-faced boy of twenty-one, whose
portrait Claire treasured in an old-fashioned gold locket, long since
discarded by her mother, who followed the fashion in jewellery as well
as in dress. It was strange to look at the face of a father who was no
older than oneself, and Claire had spent many hours gazing at the
pictured face, and trying to gain from it some idea of the personality
of the man of whom her mother persistently refused to speak.

Mrs Gifford shrank from all disagreeables, great and small, and
systematically turned her back on anything which was disturbing or
painful, so that it was only from chance remarks that her daughter had
gained any information about the past. She knew that her father had
been a successful artist, although not in the highest sense of the term.
He had a trick of turning out pretty domestic pictures which appealed
to the taste of the million, and which, being purchased by enterprising
dealers, were reproduced in cheap prints to deck the walls of suburban
parlours. While he lived he made a sufficient income, and before his
death a formal reconciliation had taken place between the runaway
daughter and her north-country parents, from whom she later inherited
the money which had supported herself and her daughter throughout the
years of her widowhood.

Claire had the vaguest idea as to the amount of her mother's means, for
until the last few years the question of money had never arisen, they
had simply decided what they wished to do, without considering the cost,
but of late there had been seasons of financial tightness, and the
morning on which this history begins had brought a most disagreeable
awakening.

Mrs Gifford was seated in the salon staring disconsolately at a note
which had just arrived by the afternoon post. It was a very
disagreeable note, for it stated in brief and callous terms that her
account at the bank was overdrawn to the extent of three hundred francs,
and politely requested that the deficit should be made good. Claire
looked flushed and angry; Mrs Gifford looked pathetic and pale.

It seemed, in the first place, quite ludicrous that such a relationship
as that of mother and daughter should exist between two women who looked
so nearly of an age, and Mrs Gifford's youthful appearance was a
standing joke in the