ultimate sincerity,
might be won by display of cash.

Midway in the month of May he again caught a severe cold, and was
confined to the house for nearly three weeks. Mrs. Damerel, who nursed
him well and tenderly, proposed that he should go down for change of
air to Falmouth. He wrote to Nancy, asking whether she would care to
see him. A prompt reply informed him that his sister was on the point
of returning to London, so that he had better choose some nearer seaside
resort.

He went to Hastings for a few days, but wearied of the place, and came
back to his London excitements. Nancy, however, had not yet returned;
nor did she until the beginning of July.

CHAPTER 4

This winter saw the establishment of the South London Fashionable Dress
Supply Association--the name finally selected by Beatrice French and her
advisers. It was an undertaking shrewdly conceived, skilfully planned,
and energetically set going. Beatrice knew the public to which her
advertisements appealed; she understood exactly the baits that would
prove irresistible to its folly and greed. In respect that it was a
public of average mortals, it would believe that business might be
conducted to the sole advantage of the customer. In respect that it
consisted of women, it would give eager attention to a scheme that
permitted each customer to spend her money, and yet to have it. In
respect that it consisted of ignorant and pretentious women, this
public could be counted upon to deceive itself in the service of its own
vanity, and maintain against all opposition that the garments obtained
on this soothing system were supremely good and fashionable.

On a basis of assumptions such as these, there was every possibility of
profitable commerce without any approach to technical fraud.

By means of the familiar 'goose-club,' licensed victuallers make
themselves the bankers of people who are too weak-minded to save their
own money until they wish to spend it, and who are quite content to
receive in ultimate return goods worth something less than half the
deposit. By means of the familiar teapot, grocers persuade their
customers that an excellent trade can be done by giving away the whole
profit on each transaction. Beatrice French, an observant young woman,
with a head for figures, had often noted and reflected upon these two
egregious illustrations of human absurdity. Her dressmaking enterprise
assimilated the features of both, and added novel devices