"Idiotic of him, isn't it?" she remarked, continuing hastily, "but you haven't given me your serious opinion. I want you to make a cool survey of the situation." "I thought I had," said Mark. "Of course, you must refuse." "That is all very well," she urged, "but there's something else you must tell me. Supposing that I refuse to marry the colonel, what is to become of me?" "There are your aunts at Sandbay!" "Oh yes, my dear little Dresden china aunts! And, you know, Mark, there's the River Thames. I would as soon plunge into the one as take a train to the others." "What is to prevent you from staying here?" he asked. "If you are tired of London, try Paris again. You can surely go where you please." "How few are lucky enough for that!" "I thought," said Mark, "you had the world before you." "More likely the workhouse," answered Bridget. "You don't mean to say you're--you're hard up!" he cried, returning to his seat on the sofa. "Oh, I have plenty of money at the bank," she explained. "Mark, I detest talking about it, but I really should love to tell you. During mother's lifetime, you must remember how comfortably we used to live. I always had everything I wanted--for that matter, so I have until this moment. Naturally," Bridget continued, "I believed that the house and everything were kept up by father's books." "Wasn't that the case?" asked Mark. "As a matter of fact," said Bridget, "they brought in very little money indeed." "Surely his name was very well known!" "Yes, and he had heaps of friends who thought ever so much of him. There are hundreds of press cuttings praising him up to the skies. During the last few months of his life he scarcely read anything else. The doctors gave his illness a long name--I dare say you would understand if I could remember; but what killed him was a broken heart." "How was that?" asked Mark. "What we really lived upon," answered Bridget, "was my mother's income. That died with her--all but a small sum, which she left to me. We were compelled to leave Crowborough, and father seemed to droop like some transplanted flower. We wandered from place to place, and I suppose he was extravagant. I seem to take after him. Neither of us could bother about economy and that sort of thing. He felt the change dreadfully, and the tragedy was that he couldn't pull himself together in his necessity. Instead of writing better, he wrote much worse. He could satisfy neither himself nor any one else. His sales fell off; he saw he wasn't doing good work. I believe that broke his heart." "Didn't he leave you anything?" asked Mark. "Nothing whatever. He knew he was dying and told me to communicate with his old friend Mr. Frankfort, a solicitor. But there was nothing due from publishers--not a penny; so it was fortunate I had the money that had been left by my mother, wasn't it?" "Do you mind," suggested Mark, "telling me how much that was?"