ndon. She put it down
to Peter's indifference, to his slowness in introducing her to his
friends. It was no more Peter's fault than it was her own. It was not
her fault that she was not pretty--there never had been a beautiful
Dobbs--and it was not her fault that she was so unfortunately frank, and
never could and never did conceal her feverish eagerness to make
desirable acquaintances, and to get into desirable sets. Until Anna came
out she was invited only to the big functions to which the whole world
went; and the hours she passed at them were not among the most blissful
of her life. The people who were at first inclined to be kind to her for
Peter's sake, dropped off when they found how her eagerness to attract
the attention of some one mightier made her unable to fix her thoughts
on the friendly remarks that they were taking pains to make. In society
she was absent-minded, fidgety, obviously on the look-out for a chance
of drawing the biggest fish into her little net; but, wealthy as she
was, she was not wealthy enough in an age of millionnaires, and not once
during the whole of her career was a big fish simple enough to be
caught.

After a time her natural shrewdness and common sense made her perceive
that her one claim to the scanty attentions she did receive was her
money. Her money had bought her Peter, and a pleasant future for her
children; it had converted a Dobbs into an Estcourt; it had given her
everything she had that was worth anything at all. Once she had
thoroughly realised this, she began to attach a tremendous importance to
the mere possession of money, and grew very stingy, making difficulties
about spending that grieved Peter greatly; not because he ever wanted
her money now that Estcourt had been restored to its old splendour and
set going again for their boy, but because meanness about money in a
woman was something he could not comprehend--something repulsive,
unfeminine, contrary to her nature as he had always understood it. He
left off making the least suggestion about Anna's education or the
household arrangements; everything that was done was done of Susie's own
accord; and he spent more and more time in Devonshire, and grew more and
more philosophical, and when he did talk to his wife, restricted his
conversation to the language of abstract wisdom.

Now this was very hard on Susie, who had no appreciation of abstract
wisdom, and who lived as lonely a life as it is possible to imagine.
Pe