‘Put any such fear out of your mind. I shall never marry him. I can never love him.’ She was going to say ‘could never love him,’ when she remembered.

‘Are you sure, my dear? The heart is not always under one’s own control.’

‘Quite sure, Auntie. I know Leonard Everard; and though I have always liked him, I do not respect him. Why, the very fact of his coming to me for money would make me reconsider any view I had formed, had nothing else ever done so. You may take it, Auntie dear, that in the way you mean Leonard is nothing to me; can never be anything to me!’ Here a sudden inspiration took her. In its light a serious difficulty passed, and the doing of a thing which had a fear of its own became easy. With a conviction in her tone,