‘I am sorry you should make a friend of any innately vulgar girl, Daphne dear,’ said Madoline gravely; ‘and don’t you think it rather vulgar to talk of your friend as Dibb?’ ‘We all did it,’ answered Daphne with a shrug; ‘I was always called Lawford. It saves trouble, and sounds friendly. You talk about Disraeli and Gladstone; why not Dibb and Lawford?’ ‘I think there’s a difference, Daphne. If you were very friendly with this Miss Dibb, why not speak of her by her Christian name?’ ‘So be it, my dearest. In future she shall be Martha, to please you. She really is a good inoffensive soul. Her father keeps a big shop in Oxford Street; but the family live in a palace on Clapham Common, with gardens, and vineries, and pineries, and goodness knows what. When I call her vulgar it is because she and all her people are so proud of their money, and measure everything by the standard of money. Martha was very inquisitive about my means. She wanted to know whether I was rich or poor, and I really couldn’t inform her. Which am I, Lina?’ Daphne looked up at her sister as if it were a question about which she was slightly curious, but not a matter of supreme moment. A faint flush mounted to Madoline’s calm brow. The soft dark eyes looked tenderly at Daphne’s eager face. ‘Dearest, why trouble yourself about the money question? Have you ever felt the inconvenience of poverty?’ ‘Never. You sent me everything I could possibly wish for; and I always had more pocket-money than any girl in the school, not excepting Martha; though she took care to inform me that her father could have allowed her ten times as much if he had chosen. No, dear; I don’t know what poverty means; but I should like to understand my own position very precisely, now that I am a woman, don’t you know? I am quite aware that you are an heiress; everybody at South Hill has taken pains to impress that fact upon my mind. Please, dear, what am I?’ ‘Darling, papa is not a rich man, but he——’ Madoline paled a little as she spoke, knowing that South Hill had been settled on her mother, and her mother’s children after her, and that, in all probability, Sir Vernon had hardly any other property in the world. ‘He will provide for you, no doubt. And if he were unable to leave you much by-and-by, I have plenty for both.’ ‘I understand,’ said Daphne, growing pale in her turn; ‘I am a pauper.’ ‘Daphne!’ ‘My mother had not a sixpence, I suppose; and that is why nobody ever speaks of her; and that is why there is not a portrait of her in this house, where she lived, and was admired, and loved. I was wrong to call Dibb vulgar for measuring all things by a money standard. It is other people’s measure, as well as hers.’ ‘Daphne, how can you say such things?’