able
income, which she spent upon the upkeep of a house that needed seven
servants and a charwoman in Lancaster Gate, and another with a garden
and carriage-horses in Surrey. Susan's engagement relieved her of the
one great anxiety of her life--that her son Christopher should "entangle
himself" with his cousin. Now that this familiar source of interest was
removed, she felt a little low and inclined to see more in Susan
than she used to. She had decided to give her a very handsome wedding
present, a cheque for two hundred, two hundred and fifty, or possibly,
conceivably--it depended upon the under-gardener and Huths' bill for
doing up the drawing-room--three hundred pounds sterling.

She was thinking of this very question, revolving the figures, as she
sat in her wheeled chair with a table spread with cards by her side. The
Patience had somehow got into a muddle, and she did not like to call for
Susan to help her, as Susan seemed to be busy with Arthur.

"She's every right to expect a handsome present from me, of course," she
thought, looking vaguely at the leopard on its hind legs, "and I've no
doubt she does! Money goes a long way with every one. The young are very
selfish. If I were to die, nobody would miss me but Dakyns, and she'll
be consoled by the will! However, I've got no reason to complain. . . .
I can still enjoy myself. I'm not a burden to any-one. . . . I like a
great many things a good deal, in spite of my legs."

Being slightly depressed, however, she went on to think of the only
people she had known who had not seemed to her at all selfish or fond of
money, who had seemed to her somehow rather finer than the general run;
people she willingly acknowledged, who were finer than she was. There
were only two of them. One was her brother, who had been drowned before
her eyes, the other was a girl, her greatest friend, who had died in
giving birth to her first child. These things had happened some fifty
years ago.

"They ought not to have died," she thought. "However, they did--and we
selfish old creatures go on." The tears came to her eyes; she felt a
genuine regret for them, a kind of respect for their youth and beauty,
and a kind of shame for herself; but the tears did not fall; and she
opened one of those innumerable novels which she used to pronounce good
or bad, or pretty middling, or really wonderful. "I can't think how
people come to imagine such things," she would say, taking off her
spectacles an