"We shall have to find apartments," she told him. "We cannot afford to rent a house of our own. But apartments are very nice and respectable. They are quite different from a boarding-house, you know. I should be very sorry if we were compelled to board." "So should I," declared Hollister. "Are you sure that we have not enough to let us rent a small house?" Claire's eyes glistened, as though the chance of their income being made to stretch thus far suggested charming possibilities. But she soon gave a sad shake of the head. "No," she decided. "We should only find ourselves running into debt. We had better take no rash risks. Your business is full of them, as it is, Herbert. Besides, a year or two may make the change easy for us." She amazed him by the speed with which she learned just how his affairs stood. Her quick mastery of facts that with most women baffle both memory and understanding, was no less rare than thorough. It had always been thus with her. Whatever she wanted to comprehend became her mental possession after slight and brief effort. It was not long before she read the price-list of stocks in the morning papers with nearly as lucid a perception of just what it meant as Hollister himself. She made her husband explain as well as he could--and this was by no means ill,--both the theory and practice of Wall Street speculation. She soon began to know all his important investments, and talk of them with facile glibness. Her control over Hollister daily strengthened. She would have swayed a man of much firmer will, and it is certain that he grew steadily more deferent to her judgment, her counsel, or even her caprices. The desire that she so plainly laid bare to him he had already estimated as a most right and natural development. In his eyes it was touched with no shade of selfishness; its egotism was to be readily enough condoned; one liked self-assertion in those whom nature had wrought of finer stature, from better clay. The queen pined for throne and sceptre; they were a debt owed her by the world; she could not help being born royal.