e thing. Your
duty as well as your chance, if you're capable of seeing it, is to use
me. Show family feeling by seeing what I'm good for. If you had it as
_I_ have it you'd see I'm still good--well, for a lot of things.
There's in fact, my dear," Mr. Croy wound up, "a coach-and-four to be
got out of me." His drop, or rather his climax, failed a little of
effect, indeed, through an undue precipitation of memory. Something his
daughter had said came back to him. "You've settled to give away half
your little inheritance?"

Her hesitation broke into laughter. "No--I haven't 'settled' anything."

"But you mean, practically, to let Marian collar it?" They stood there
face to face, but she so denied herself to his challenge that he could
only go on. "You've a view of three hundred a year for her in addition
to what her husband left her with? Is _that,"_ the remote progenitor of
such wantonness audibly wondered, "your morality?"

Kate found her answer without trouble. "Is it your idea that I should
give you everything?"

The "everything" clearly struck him--to the point even of determining
the tone of his reply. "Far from it. How can you ask that when I refuse
what you tell me you came to offer? Make of my idea what you can; I
think I've sufficiently expressed it, and it's at any rate to take or
to leave. It's the only one, I may nevertheless add; it's the basket
with all my eggs. It's my conception, in short, of your duty."

The girl's tired smile watched the word as if it had taken on a small
grotesque visibility. "You're wonderful on such subjects! I think I
should leave you in no doubt," she pursued, "that if I were to sign my
aunt's agreement I should carry it out, in honour, to the letter."

"Rather, my own love! It's just your honour that I appeal to. The only
way to play the game _is_ to play it. There's no limit to what your
aunt can do for you."

"Do you mean in the way of marrying me?"

"What else should I mean? Marry properly----"

"And then?" Kate asked as he hung fire.

"And then--well, I _will_ talk with you. I'll resume relations."

She looked about her and picked up her parasol. "Because you're not so
afraid of any one else in the world as you are of _her?_ My husband, if
I should marry, would be, at the worst, less of a terror? If that's
what you mean, there may be something in it. But doesn't it depend a
little also on what you mean by my getting a proper one? However," Kate
added as she picked o