fe, who would be frightened into
forgetting things and their sequence. What he meant to discover was
where he stood in the matter--where his father-in-law stood, and, rather
specially, to have a chance to sum up the weaknesses and strengths of
the new arrival. That would be to his interest. In talking this thing
over she would unconsciously reveal how much vanity or emotion or
inexperience he might count upon as factors safe to use in one's
dealings with her in the future.

As he listened he was supported by the fact that he did not lose
consciousness of the eyes and the figure. But for these it is probable
that he would have gone blind with fury at certain points which forced
themselves upon him. The first was that there had been an absurd and
immense expenditure which would simply benefit his son and not himself.
He could not sell or borrow money on what had been given. Apparently
the place had been re-established on a footing such as it had not rested
upon during his own generation, or his father's. As he loathed life in
the country, it was not he who would enjoy its luxury, but his wife
and her child. The second point was that these people--this girl--had
somehow had the sharpness to put themselves in the right, and to place
him in a position at which he could not complain without putting himself
in the wrong. Public opinion would say that benefits had been heaped
upon him, that the correct thing had been done correctly with the
knowledge and approval of the legal advisers of his family. It had been
a masterly thing, that visit to Townlinson & Sheppard. He was obliged to
aid his self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sort
of girl, this Betty, whose childhood he had loathed, and, to his jaded
taste, novelty appealed enormously. Her attraction for him was also
added to by the fact that he was not at all sure that there was not
combined with it a pungent spice of the old detestation. He was repelled
as well as allured. She represented things which he hated. First, the
mere material power, which no man can bully, whatsoever his humour. It
was the power he most longed for and, as he could not hope to possess
it, most sneered at and raged against. Also, as she talked, it was
plain that her habit of self-control and her sense of resource would
be difficult to deal with. He was a survival of the type of man whose
simple creed was that women should not possess resources, as when they
possessed them they cou