"And as a mere mortal I hope she won't allow Rutherford to spend all her money," said Susie's confidant, an iron-grey bachelor of fifty, who spent the greater part of his life sitting in pretty women's pockets. "A racing stud is a pretty deep pit for gold at the best; but a man who has married a triple millionaire's widow may safely allow himself one hobby. Rutherford goes in for too many things: his dirigible balloons and his aeroplane, his racing cars and his motor launches: his Ostend holiday, where people say he is hardly ever out of the gambling rooms. Your friend had better keep an eye on her pass-book." "Vera!" cried Susie, with uplifted eyebrows. "Vera look at a pass-book!" "As a banker's widow she might be supposed to know that there are such financial thermometers. She must have learnt something of business from Provana." "She never took the slightest interest in his business, and he was far too noble to degrade her by talking of money." "A pity," said the bachelor; "when a woman's husband is a great financier he may want to talk about money; and his wife ought to be interested in things that are of vital concern for him." "That's a counsel of perfection," said Susie, "and very few women rise to it. All I have ever known about my husband is that he is interested in railways and insurance companies and things, and that when any of them are going wrong I'd better not talk of my dressmaker's bills, or let him see my pass-book." "Then you know what a pass-book is." "I have to," sighed Susie, "for my normal state is an overdrawn account. I think the letters n.e. and n.s. are quite the horridest in the alphabet." "Yet you never ask a friend to help you out of a fix?" "Not much; when it comes to that I shall make a mistake in measuring my dose of chloral, and it will be 'poor Susan Amphlett, death by misadventure'!" Susan, who had never had adventures or "affairs" of her own, was a kind of modern representative of the chorus in a Greek play, and was always explaining people, more especially her bosom friends, of whom Vera was the dearest. She was really fond of Vera, and there was no _arrière pensée_ of envy and malice in her explanations. Her intense interest in other people may perhaps be attributed to the fact that she hardly ever opened a book--not even the novel of the season--and that her knowledge of public events was derived solely from the talk at luncheon tables. Certainly it might be admitted, even by the malicious, that Claude and Vera were an ideal couple. They outraged all modern custom in spending the greater part of their lives in close companionship; he originating all their amusements, and she keenly interested in everything he originated. They were happy, and they were continually telling each other how happy. They always went back to the childish days at Disbrowe.