'Have you? I should like the sensation of offering hundreds of pounds
to some one. It must give a strange feeling of dignity and importance.'

'Oh, only _two_ hundred! A wretched little sum.'

'You are a person of large ideas, as I have often told you. Where did
you get them, I wonder?'

'Don't put on that face! It's the one I like least of all your many
faces. It's suspicious.'

Mildred went to take off her things, and was quickly at the tea-table.
She had a somewhat graver look than usual, and chose rather to listen
than talk.

Not long after tea, when there had been a long and unnatural silence,
Mildred making pretence of absorption in a 'Treasury' and her companion
standing at the window, whence she threw back furtive glances, the
thunder of a postman's knock downstairs caused both of them to start,
and look at each other in a conscience-stricken way.

'That may be for me,' said Monica, stepping to the door. 'I'll go and
look.'

Her conjecture was right. Another letter from Widdowson, still more
alarmed and vehement than the last. She read it rapidly on the
staircase, and entered the room with sheet and envelope squeezed
together in her hand.

'I'm going to tell you all about this, Milly.'

The other nodded and assumed an attitude of sober attention. In
relating her story, Monica moved hither and thither; now playing with
objects on the mantlepiece, now standing in the middle of the floor,
hands locked nervously behind her. Throughout, her manner was that of
defence; she seemed doubtful of herself, and anxious to represent the
case as favourably as possible; not for a moment had her voice the ring
of courageous passion, nor the softness of tender feeling. The
narrative hung together but awkwardly, and in truth gave a very
indistinct notion of how she had comported herself at the various
stages of the irregular courtship. Her behaviour had been marked by far
more delicacy and scruple than she succeeded in representing. Painfully
conscious of this, she exclaimed at length,--

'I see your opinion of me has suffered. You don't like this story. You
wonder how I could do such things.'

'Well, dear, I certainly wonder how you could begin,' Mildred made
answer, with her natural directness, but gently. 'Afterwards, of
course, it was different. When you had once got to be sure that he was
a gentleman--'

'I was sure of that so soon,' exclaimed Monica, her cheeks still red.
'You will understand it much better