she had not wanted for anything.
When he had explained exactly what she owned, shown her how it was
invested, and told her that she must now open her own banking account,
she stood gazing at the sheets of paper, whose items she had been
supposed to understand, and her face gathered the look which meant that
she was troubled. Without lifting her eyes she asked:

"Does it all come from--him?"

He had not expected that, and flushed under his tan.

"No; eight thousand of it was your mother's."

Gyp looked at him, and said:

"Then I won't take the rest--please, Dad."

Winton felt a sort of crabbed pleasure. What should be done with that
money if she did not take it, he did not in the least know. But not to
take it was like her, made her more than ever his daughter--a kind of
final victory. He turned away to the window from which he had so often
watched for her mother. There was the corner she used to turn! In one
minute, surely she would be standing there, colour glowing in her cheeks,
her eyes soft behind her veil, her breast heaving a little with her
haste, waiting for his embrace. There she would stand, drawing up her
veil. He turned round. Difficult to believe it was not she! And he
said:

"Very well, my love. But you will take the equivalent from me instead.
The other can be put by; some one will benefit some day!"

At those unaccustomed words, "My love," from his undemonstrative lips,
the colour mounted in her cheeks and her eyes shone. She threw her arms
round his neck.

She had her fill of music in those days, taking piano lessons from a
Monsieur Harmost, a grey-haired native of Liege, with mahogany cheeks and
the touch of an angel, who kept her hard at it and called her his "little
friend." There was scarcely a concert of merit that she did not attend
or a musician of mark whose playing she did not know, and, though
fastidiousness saved her from squirming in adoration round the feet of
those prodigious performers, she perched them all on pedestals, men and
women alike, and now and then met them at her aunt's house in Curzon
Street.

Aunt Rosamund, also musical, so far as breeding would allow, stood for a
good deal to Gyp, who had built up about her a romantic story of love
wrecked by pride from a few words she had once let drop. She was a tall
and handsome woman, a year older than Winton, with a long, aristocratic
face, deep-blue, rather shining eyes, a gentlemanly manner, warm heart,
and on