"I don't know anything about it," Miss Kimpsey declared, with literal truth. "I suppose such things justify themselves somehow, especially when it's a clergyman. And of course you know about your mother's idea of coming over here to settle?" "No!" said Elfrida, arrested. "She hasn't mentioned it. Do they talk of it seriously?" "I don't know about _seriously_. Mr. Bell doesn't seem as if he could make up his mind. He's so fond of Sparta you know. But Mrs. Bell is just wild to come. She thinks, of course, of having you to live with them again; and then she says that on their present income--you will excuse my referring to your parents' reduced circumstances, Miss Bell?" "Please go on." "Your mother considers that Mr. Bell's means would go further in England than in America. She asked me to make inquiries; and I must say, judging from the price of umbrellas and woollen goods, I think they would." Elfrida was silent for a moment, looking steadfastly at the possibility Miss Kimpsey had developed. "What a complication!" she said, half to herself; and then, observing Miss Kimpsey's look of astonishment: "I had no idea of that," she repeated; "I wonder that they have not mentioned it." "Well then!" said Miss Kimpsey, with sudden compunction, "I presume they wanted to surprise you. And I've gone and spoiled it!" "To surprise me!" Elfrida repeated in her absorption. "Oh yes; very likely!" Inwardly she saw her garret, the garret that so exhaled her, where she had tasted success and knew a happiness that never altogether failed, vanish into a snug cottage in Hampstead or Surbiton. She saw the rain of her independence, of her delicious solitariness, of the life that began and ended in her sense of the strange, and the beautiful and the grotesque in a world of curious slaveries, of which it suited her to be an alien spectator, amused and free. She foresaw long conflicts and discussions, pryings which she could, not resent, justifications which would be forced upon her, obligations which she must not refuse. More intolerable still, she saw herself in the role of a family idol, the household happiness hinging on her moods, the question of her health, her work, her pleasure being eternally the chief one. Miss Kimpsey talked on about other things --Windsor Castle, the Abbey, the Queen's stables; and Elfrida made occasional replies, politely vague. She was mechanically twisting the little gold hoop on her wrist, and thinking of the artistic sufferings of a family idol. Obviously the only thing was to destroy the prospective shrine. "We don't find board as cheap as we expected," Miss Kimpsey was saying. "Living, that is food, is very expensive," Elfrida replied quickly; "a good beefsteak, for instance, costs three Francs--I mean two and fivepence, a pound." "I _can't_ think in shillings!" Miss Kimpsey interposed plaintively.