or upon the accuracy of his estimates the
whole policy of his life is ordered. If he cannot rely on definite
values of property, his compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters
without a helm.

After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been chronicled,
Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his mind. He believed
that he had made the matter of the final cost so very plain that the
possibility of its being again exceeded had really never entered his
head. On hearing from Bosinney that his limit of twelve thousand pounds
would be exceeded by something like four hundred, he had grown white with
anger. His original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been
ten thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses. Over this last
expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in the wrong.
How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of himself Soames could not
conceive; but he had done so, and all the rancour and hidden jealousy
that had been burning against him for so long was now focussed in rage at
this crowning piece of extravagance. The attitude of the confident and
friendly husband was gone. To preserve property--his wife--he had
assumed it, to preserve property of another kind he lost it now.

"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose you're
perfectly contented with yourself. But I may as well tell you that
you've altogether mistaken your man!"

What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time, but after
dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself and Bosinney to
make quite sure. There could be no two opinions about it--the fellow had
made himself liable for that extra four hundred, or, at all events, for
three hundred and fifty of it, and he would have to make it good.

He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion. Seated
in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace on a collar.
She had not once spoken to him all the evening.

He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the mirror
said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of himself; he will have
to pay for it!"

She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what you are
talking about!"

"You soon will. A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four hundred
pounds."

"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that tow