snares. If you marry one you despise, look at the pit. Yes; you will be
mine! Half my love of my country and my profession is love of you.
Margaret is fire in my blood. I used to pray for opportunities, that
Margaret might hear of me. I knew that gallant actions touched her; I
would have fallen gladly; I was sure her heart would leap when she heard
of me. Let it beat against mine. Speak!"

"I will," said Mrs. Lovell, and she suppressed the throbs of her bosom.
Her voice was harsh and her face bloodless. "How much money have you,
Percy?"

This sudden sluicing of cold water on his heat of passion petrified him.

"Money," he said, with a strange frigid scrutiny of her features. As in
the flash of a mirror, he beheld her bony, worn, sordid, unacceptable.
But he was fain to admit it to be an eminently proper demand for
enlightenment.

He said deliberately, "I possess an income of five hundred a year,
extraneous, and in addition to my pay as major in Her Majesty's service."

Then he paused, and the silence was like a growing chasm between them.

She broke it by saying, "Have you any expectations?"

This was crueller still, though no longer astonishing. He complained in
his heart merely that her voice had become so unpleasant.

With emotionless precision, he replied, "At my mother's death--"

She interposed a soft exclamation.

"At my mother's death there will come to me by reversion, five or six
thousand pounds. When my father dies, he may possibly bequeath his
property to me. On that I cannot count."

Veritable tears were in her eyes. Was she affecting to weep
sympathetically in view of these remote contingencies?

"You will not pretend that you know me now, Percy," she said, trying to
smile; and she had recovered the natural feminine key of her voice. "I am
mercenary, you see; not a mercenary friend. So, keep me as a friend--say
you will be my friend."

"Nay, you had a right to know," he protested.

"It was disgraceful--horrible; but it was necessary for me to know."

"And now that you do know?"

"Now that I know, I have only to say--be as merciful in your idea of me
as you can."

She dropped her hand in his, and it was with a thrill of dismay that he
felt the rush of passion reanimating his frozen veins.

"Be mercenary, but be mine! I will give you something better to live for
than this absurd life of fashion. You reckon on what our expenditure will
be by that standard. It's comparative poverty; but--