now."

"So little Marie had fifty pounds odd for her own banking account!"

"Not at all," she said, smiling into the fire as if she saw a very
pleasant vision there; "I spent it."

Osborn took his pipe from his mouth and sat forward. "Whatever on?" he
ejaculated.

His motion was surprise rather than disapproval. The money was hers,
of course. But that a woman should have the temerity to spend fifty
pounds odd in a few months when she was already supplied with enough
to ensure comfort for herself and her family....

She lifted her head and looked at him. She dared him. The curls on her
forehead danced and the amethyst eardrops twinkled; the shrug of her
shoulders brought the mauve ribbons again under his notice.

"As I told you, I'm going into accounts with you this evening."

"Oh, well ... it's your own affair."

"But husbands like to make wives' affairs their own, don't they?"

She rose to find her account-books in a pigeon-hole of the bureau. Her
colour had faded; her eyes were bright. Like all women she feared the
hour of battle, while she did not flinch from it. So pretty she
looked, standing there, that Osborn sprang up after her. He was just
man--not husband, not master, nor judge, nor timekeeper of the home;
but man, admiring and passionate.

"I say, hang the accounts! Come to me!"

There was again that about her which checked him. It was an almost
virginal aloofness, though he would not have known how so to define
it. When she sat down once more by his side he reached for his pipe
again calmly and put it between his teeth, clenching them hard on the
stem.

"Well, pretty cat?" he asked in a strained voice.

The old love-name fell upon cold ears. Opening the first book, she
mused busily:

"This is the housekeeping; the other's odd expenses. But I'd better
finish telling you about mother's will first. She left me two hundred
and twenty pounds a year."

This time he made no sign at the news, except by raising his eyebrows
and directing towards her a steady look of interest and inquiry.

"So," she continued, "we have been quite well off. Directly you left I
reckoned up our expenses and found we were better off than before, on
two hundred a year, and I got a charwoman. I told you the first part
of the year was like a half-holiday. After my dear mother died and I
had the money, I engaged Ann."

"Quite right," he said rather gruffly.

"I am like you, Osborn, I have had a great year. If it hadn't m