is eyes.

"A man finds the world what he makes it," he said. He rose, came and
stood over her, and went on, laughing. "But the devil makes an aunt once
and for all, and won't let one touch his handiwork."

"You can touch her savings, though!"

He blazed out into a sudden defiance. "Oh, refuse if you like. I can
manage without you. You're not essential to me."

She smiled, her thin lips setting in a wry curve. Now and then it seemed
hard that there could be no affection between her and the one being whom
the course of events plainly suggested for her love. But, as Sandro
said, they knew one another very well. In the result she felt entitled
to assume no airs of superiority; he had not been a dutiful or a
grateful nephew, she had not been a devoted or a patient aunt; as she
looked back, she was obliged to remember one or two occasions when he
had driven or betrayed her into a severity of which she did not
willingly think. This reflection dictated the words with which she met
his outburst.

"You can tell your story on Judgment Day and I'll tell mine," she said.
"Oh, neither of 'em will lose in the telling, I'll be bound. Meanwhile
let's be----"

"Friends?" he suggested with an obvious but not ill-natured sneer.

"Lord, no! Whatever you like! Banker and client, debtor and creditor,
actor and audience? Take your choice--and send me your bank's address."

He nodded slightly, as though he concluded a bargain, not at all as
though he acknowledged a favour. Yet he remarked in a ruminative tone,
"I shall be very glad of the money."

A moment's pause followed. Then Miss Quisante observed reluctantly,

"The only thing I ever care to know about you is what you're planning,
Sandro. Don't I earn that by my thousand a year?"

"Well, here you are. I'm started, thanks to Dick Benyon and myself. I've
got my seat, I can go on now. But I'm an outsider still." He paused a
moment. "I feel that; Benyon feels it too. I want to obviate it a bit. I
mean to marry."

"An insider?" asked the old lady. She looked at him steadily. "Your
taste's too bad," she said; he was certainly dressed in a rather bizarre
way. "And your manners," she added. "She won't have you," she ended.
Quisante took no notice and seemed not to hear; he stood quite still by
the window, staring over the park. "Besides she'll know what you want
her for."

He wheeled round suddenly and looked down at his aunt. His face was
softer, the cunningness had gone from his s