She broke into a vexed laugh. "When you've had all the fun you can get out of me, perhaps you'll begin to help me. You see, I want it settled. I want to be off to Monte with Pattie." "I see. You want to go with Pattie and----?" Mrs. Bolton shook her head. "Just you and Pattie?" "She's going to stand it to me: I haven't got a farthing. And, I say, Frank, he ought to go back to those poor little wretches now. You can make him do it if you like, you know." "I? Well, I'm an odd sort of party for such a job." "Not a bit. He'll listen to you just because--well, because----" "I haven't spared your feelings, Flora, don't mind mine." "Because he knows you don't talk humbug or cant." "You're being complimentary after all--or at any rate you're meaning to be. And you'd never see him again?" "He'll never want to see me." She was facing Caylesham now. "I've been fond of poor old Tom. Come, you know I have? Say that for me." "Yes, I know you have. I've reproved you for it myself." "But he'll not want to see me--and soon I shan't want to see him either." She looked a little distressed for a minute, then shrugged her shoulders with a laugh. "That's the way of the world." "Of part of it," Caylesham murmured as he lit a cigar. But he was really sorry for Mrs. Bolton. Notwithstanding a notable mixture of motives, in which the condition of her purse and the opportunity of going to the Riviera figured largely, she was grieved at the way in which her friendship with Tom was ending--grieved that it must end, and hurt that Tom should desire to have it ended. She had always suffered from this unfortunate tendency to kindly emotions which the exigencies of her position did not permit her to indulge. Indeed it was very likely the kindly emotions which had originally produced the position. That did not make the matter any better; the ultimate incongruity was none the less undesirable. With his indifference to accepted codes, Caylesham thought it rather lamentable too. Still she did want, above all things, to go to the Riviera with Pattie Henderson. One must compromise with life, and it was not clear that she was getting the worst of the bargain.