telling me every day
that I am to induce him to help you!"

"Not by complaining that I am poor. But how did it all begin?" She
had to think for a moment before she could recollect how it did
begin. "There has been something," he said, "which you are ashamed to
tell me."

"There is nothing that I am ashamed to tell you. There never has been
and never will be anything." And she stood up as she spoke, with open
eyes and extended nostrils. "Whatever may come, however wretched it
may be, I shall not be ashamed of myself."

"But of me!"

"Why do you say so? Why do you try to make unhappiness between us?"

"You have been talking of--my poverty."

"My father asked why you should go to Dovercourt,--and whether it was
because it would save expense."

"You want to go somewhere?"

"Not at all. I am contented to stay in London. But I said that I
thought the expense had a good deal to do with it. Of course it has."

"Where do you want to be taken? I suppose Dovercourt is not
fashionable."

"I want nothing."

"If you are thinking of travelling abroad, I can't spare the time.
It isn't an affair of money, and you had no business to say so. I
thought of the place because it is quiet and because I can get up and
down easily. I am sorry that I ever came to live in this house."

"Why do you say that, Ferdinand?"

"Because you and your father make cabals behind my back. If there is
anything I hate it is that kind of thing."

"You are very unjust," she said to him sobbing. "I have never
caballed. I have never done anything against you. Of course papa
ought to know."

"Why ought he to know? Why is your father to have the right of
inquiry into all my private affairs?"

"Because you want his assistance. It is only natural. You always tell
me to get him to assist you. He spoke most kindly, saying that he
would like to know how the things are."

"Then he won't know. As for wanting his assistance, of course I
want the fortune which he ought to give you. He is man of the world
enough to know that as I am in business capital must be useful to
me. I should have thought that you would understand as much as that
yourself."

"I do understand it, I suppose."

"Then why don't you act as my friend rather than his? Why don't you
take my part? It seems to me that you are much more his daughter than
my wife."

"That is most unfair."

"If you had any pluck you would make him understand that for your
sake he ought to say what he m