She began with the money. She concluded that such cash as her father had given her for her own separate and private use she might still call her own, and use as her own. Had she been dealing with a sum of any magnitude she would have hesitated; for this young woman was a Don Quixote in petticoats, and would rather starve than eat food which she even fancied belonged to others; but she was not dealing with a sum of any magnitude. Her father had always made her a generous allowance, of which she had always made a generous use; regarding herself as, in a sense, her father's almoner, she used far the larger part of it in works of charity. Since she left school it had been his custom to give her, four times a year, a sum of one hundred and twenty-five pounds, always in gold. It had been one of his peculiarities that he had never given her either cheques or bank-notes, but always sovereigns. One of the quarterly sums had always been handed to her during the first week in April; she had been expecting it when her father had been taken ill. As a matter of fact, it was her hundred and twenty-five sovereigns, plus two more, which had formed that little heap of gold which was on the study table when Elaine Harding first adventured through the window. So, as that little heap had never found its way to her, all she actually possessed was what was left from last quarter--and the first three months of the year always were such expensive months. During the winter there was apt to be so much want and suffering; sometimes she found it hard to make both ends meet, even though she spent scarcely anything on herself at all. However, that winter quarter there had been something over; that something represented her entire fortune, nearly nine pounds; to be exact, eight pounds fourteen and eightpence. Even the most clamorous creditor might have suffered her to go out to face the world with that. Especially as beyond that Nora had very little of a portable nature which she considered she would be justified in regarding as her own, except her clothes.