“Well, _I_ am one of them,” said Fanny, quite unabashed, turning a diamond ring round on her finger so that its flashing splendor lent emphasis to the assertion, “and I can assure you that it is a very good means. Pride is the matter with you,” she went on, remorselessly, “and I call it a very selfish thing--much worse than the mercenary spirit, which I presume you feel very virtuous in despising! You don’t deny that you are in love with Aimée; you dare not say that she is not worth a thousand times more than her fortune; and yet you are prepared to let _her_ go, for the sake of the money you profess to hold in such scorn, and because the Joscelyns might call you a fortune-hunter.” This was certainly very plain speech, and contained a kernel of truth which struck Kyrle sharply. “If I have held money in scorn,” he said, “it has only been with regard to myself. I know well what its value is in the eyes of others. And it is true that I think too much of my own pride, perhaps; but this is a point on which I have always been peculiarly sensitive--” “As if I did not know that!” she interposed, with a note of that curious old resentment against his culpable indifference to mercenary considerations in her voice. “You were so afraid of being suspected of paying court to your uncle, that you behaved outrageously to him. Oh, it was a very fine thing to show your spirit, your independence, your scorn of groveling souls that cared for money! So you lost a fortune which a little compliance with an old man’s whims would have secured to you; and now you are enjoying the fine results thereof, and preparing to be guilty of the same folly, only in an aggravated form, over again!” Some people, leaning in the windows of one of the tall, old houses across the canal, and watching the little scene curiously, remarked among themselves that the pretty foreign lady seemed to be a terrible scold, and that the poor man--her husband, probably--had little to say under her rating. “He has deserved it, no doubt,” remarked one woman, enlightened by her own experience. “It is a case of jealousy, most likely.” “What a vindictive creature you are!” Kyrle was meanwhile saying, with a smile. “Why can not my old follies--for which, as you justly observe, I am now suffering--be allowed to rest? I grant you that I was foolish, impracticable, full of pride--” “As you are yet,” she interpolated. “Granted again. But a fortune-hunter--to be suspected of seeking a woman for her wealth--that is something I should feel very deeply. Yet Miss Vincent is indeed worth so much more than her fortune, that to speak of it in connection with her seems an insult. If she were only rid of it--” “But she is not,” said practical Fanny; “and you can hardly expect her to give it or throw it away in order to oblige you.”