gold-mine. She did not
assume satisfaction; she really was satisfied. Her satisfaction was
absurd, and nothing that Mr. Prohack could say would diminish it. She
had already begun to spend the financial results of the speculation with
enormous verve. For instance, she had hired another Eagle to take the
place of the wounded Eagle, without uttering a word to her husband of
what she had done. Mr. Prohack could see the dregs of his bank-balance;
and in a dream he had had glimpses of a sinister edifice at the bottom
of a steep slope, the building being the Bankruptcy Court.

"Is it a railway strike you're afraid of?" demanded Dr. Veiga cruelly.

And Eve replied with sweetness:

"I can't leave London until my son Charlie comes back from Glasgow, and
he's written me to say he'll be here next week."

A first-rate example, this, of her new secretiveness! She had said
absolutely nothing to Mr. Prohack about a letter from Charlie.

"When did you hear that?" Mr. Prohack might well have asked; but he was
too loyal to her to betray her secretiveness by such a question. He did
not wish the Portuguese quack to know that he, the husband, was kept in
the dark about anything whatever. He had his ridiculous dignity, had
Mr. Prohack, and all his motives were mixed motives. Not a perfectly
pure motive in the whole of his volitional existence!

However, Sissie put the question in her young blundering way. "Oh,
mother dear! You never told us!"

"I received the letter the day before yesterday," Eve continued gravely.
"And Charlie is certainly not coming home to find me away."

For two entire days she had had the important letter and had concealed
it. Mr. Prohack was disturbed.

"Very well," Dr. Veiga concurred. "It doesn't really matter whether you
go to Frinton now or next month, or even next year but one. You're a
powerful woman and you'll last a long time yet, especially if you don't
worry. I won't call for about a week, and if you'd like to consult
another doctor, do." He smiled on her in an avuncular manner, and rose.

Whereupon Mr. Prohack also jumped up.

"I'm not worrying," she protested, with a sweet, pathetic answering
smile. "Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I'm worrying because I know I'm worrying
my poor husband." She went quickly to her poor husband and kissed him
lavishly. Eve was an artist in kissing, and never a greater artist than
at that moment. And now Mr. Prohack, though still to the physical eye a
single individual, becam