the garden, and Bridget watched their
meeting--Nelly's soft and smiling welcome, and Farrell's eagerness, his
evident joy in finding her alone.

'And she just wilfully blinds herself!' thought Bridget
contemptuously--'talks about his being a brother to her, and that sort
of nonsense. He's in love with her!--of course he's in love with her.
And as for Nelly--she's not in love with him. But she's getting used to
him; she depends on him. When he's not there she misses him. She's
awfully glad to see him when he comes. Perhaps, it'll take a month or
two. I give it a month or two--perhaps six months--perhaps a year. And
then she'll marry him--and--'

Here her thoughts became rather more vague and confused. They were
compounded of a fierce impatience with the war, and of certain urgent
wishes and ambitions, which had taken possession of a strong and
unscrupulous character. She wanted to travel. She wanted to see the
world, and not to be bothered by having to think of money. Contact with
very rich people, like the Farrells, and the constant spectacle of what
an added range and power is given to the human will by money, had
turned the dull discontent of her youth into an active fever of desire.
She had no illusions about herself at all. She was already a plain and
unattractive old maid. Nobody would want to marry her; and she did not
want to marry anybody. But she wanted to _do_ things and to _see_
things, when the hateful war was over. She was full of curiosities about
life and the world, that were rather masculine than feminine. Her
education, though it was still patchy and shallow, had been advancing
since Nelly's marriage, and her intelligence was hungry. The
satisfaction of it seemed too to promise her the only real pleasures to
which she could look forward in life. On the wall of her bedroom were
hanging photographs of Rome, Athens, the East. She dreamt of a wandering
existence; she felt that she would be insatiable of movement, of
experience, if the chance were given her.

But how could one travel, or buy books, or make new acquaintances,
without money?--something more at any rate than the pittance on which
she and Nelly subsisted.

What was it Sir William was supposed to have, by way of income?--thirty
thousand a year? Well, he wouldn't always be spending it on his
hospital, and War income tax, and all the other horrible burdens of the
time. If Nelly married him, she would have an ample margin to play with;
and to d