out you."

Mildred lifted her head, a gleam of her former spirit in her eyes. Then
she remembered, and bent her gaze upon the ground.

"But he, like the cur that he is, answered through a secretary that he
wished to have nothing to do with either of you."

Mildred guessed that Frank had made the marriage an excuse.

"Surely some of your relatives will do something for you. I have my
hands full, supporting your mother. I don't propose to have two
strapping, worthless women hanging from my neck."

She bent her head lower, and remained silent.

"I warn you to bestir yourself," he went on. "I give you four months.
After the first of the year you can't stay here unless you pay your
share--your third."

No answer.

"You hear what I say, miss?" he demanded.

"Yes," replied she.

"If you had any sense you wouldn't wait until your last cent was gone.
You'd go to New York now and get something to do."

"What?" she asked--all she could trust herself to speak.

"How should _I_ know?" retorted he furiously. "You are a stranger to
me. You've been educated, I assume. Surely there's something you can
do. You've been out six years now, and have had no success, for you're
neither married nor engaged. You can't call it success to be flattered
and sought by people who wanted invitations to this house when it was a
social center."

He paused for response from her. None came.

"You admit you are a failure?" he said sharply.

"Yes," said she.

"You must have realized it several years ago," he went on. "Instead of
allowing your mother to keep on wasting money in entertaining lavishly
here to give you a chance to marry, you should have been preparing
yourself to earn a living." A pause. "Isn't that true, miss?"

He had a way of pronouncing the word "miss" that made it an epithet, a
sneer at her unmarried and unmarriageable state. She colored, paled,
murmured:

"Yes."

"Then, better late than never. You'll do well to follow my advice and
go to New York and look about you."

"I'll--I'll think of it," stammered she.

And she did think of it. But in all her life she had never considered
the idea of money-making. That was something for men, and for the
middle and lower classes--while Hanging Rock was regarded as most
noisomely middle class by fashionable people, it did not so regard
itself. Money-making was not for ladies. Like all her class, she was
a constant and a severe critic of the women of the lower