and spends all he makes. Money always had been
forthcoming; therefore money always would be forthcoming.

The mourning and the loss of the person who had filled and employed
their lives caused the widow and the daughter to live very quietly
during the succeeding year. They spent only half of their capital. For
reasons of selfish and far-sighted prudence which need no detailing
Frank moved away to New York within six months of his father's death
and reduced communication between himself and wife and his mother and
sister to a frigid and rapidly congealing minimum. He calculated that
by the time their capital was consumed they would have left no feeling
of claim upon him or he feeling of duty toward them.

It was not until eighteen months after her father's death, when the
total capital was sunk to less than fifteen thousand dollars, that
Mildred awakened to the truth of their plight. A few months at most,
and they would have to give up that beautiful house which had been her
home all her life. She tried to grasp the meaning of the facts as her
intelligence presented them to her, but she could not. She had no
practical training whatever. She had been brought up as a rich man's
child, to be married to a rich man, and never to know anything of the
material details of life beyond what was necessary in managing servants
after the indifferent fashion of the usual American woman of the
comfortable classes. She had always had a maid; she could not even
dress herself properly without the maid's assistance. Life without a
maid was inconceivable; life without servants was impossible.

She wandered through the house, through the grounds. She said to
herself again and again: "We have got to give up all this, and be
miserably poor--with not a servant, with less than the tenement people
have." But the words conveyed no meaning to her. She said to herself
again and again: "I must rouse myself. I must do something. I
must--must--must!" But she did not rouse, because there was nothing to
rouse. So far as practical life was concerned she was as devoid of
ideas as a new-born baby.

There was but the one hope--marriage, a rich marriage. It is the habit
of men who can take care of themselves and of women who are securely
well taken care of to scorn the woman or the helpless-bred man who
marries for money or even entertains that idea. How little imagination
these scorners have! To marry for a mere living, hardly better tha