k; "but she believes--how indeed can I tell you what she
believes?--that I can work it so well, if you understand, that in the
fulness of time I shall hold him in a vice. I'm to keep him along for
the present, but not to listen to him, for if I listen to him I shall
lose him. It's ingenious, it's complicated; but I daresay you follow
me."

"Don't move--don't move," said Nick. "Pardon a poor clumsy beginner."

"No, I shall explain quietly. Somehow--here it's _very_ complicated and
you mustn't lose the thread--I shall be an actress and make a tremendous
lot of money, and somehow too (I suppose a little later) I shall become
an ambassadress and be the favourite of courts. So you see it will all
be delightful. Only I shall have to go very straight. Mamma reminds me
of a story I once heard about the mother of a young lady who was in
receipt of much civility from the pretender to a crown, which indeed he,
and the young lady too, afterwards more or less wore. The old countess
watched the course of events and gave her daughter the cleverest advice:
'_Tiens bon, ma fille_, and you shall sit upon a throne.' Mamma wishes
me to _tenir bon_--she apparently thinks there's a danger I mayn't--so
that if I don't sit upon a throne I shall at least parade at the foot of
one. And if before that, for ten years, I pile up the money, they'll
forgive me the way I've made it. I should hope so, if I've _tenu bon_!
Only ten years is a good while to hold out, isn't it? If it isn't Mr.
Sherringham it will be some one else. Mr. Sherringham has the great
merit of being a bird in the hand. I'm to keep him along, I'm to be
still more diplomatic than even he can be."

Mrs. Rooth listened to her daughter with an air of assumed reprobation
which melted, before the girl had done, into a diverted, complacent
smile--the gratification of finding herself the proprietress of so much
wit and irony and grace. Miriam's account of her mother's views was a
scene of comedy, and there was instinctive art in the way she added
touch to touch and made point upon point. She was so quiet, to oblige
her painter, that only her fine lips moved--all her expression was in
their charming utterance. Mrs. Rooth, after the first flutter of a less
cynical spirit, consented to be sacrificed to an effect of the really
high order she had now been educated to recognise; so that she scarce
hesitated, when Miriam had ceased speaking, before she tittered out with
the fondest indulgence: