So it was arranged and agreed. As again he moved to go she won a new pledge of unending secrecy, and Charlie came with a document. Beside the parlor lamp, where, with one tiny foot covertly unslippered for the easement of angry corns, Madame sat embroidering, Kincaid broke the seal and read. He forced a scowl, but through it glimmered a joy in which Flora discerned again the thought of Anna. "Charlie," he said as a smile broke through, "prepare yourself." "Now, Captain, if those old imbeciles--" The commander's smile broadened: "Our battery, ladies and gentlemen, can't go for a week." All laughed but Charlie. He swore at the top of his voice and threw himself from the room. When his Captain had followed, Flora, standing and smiling, drew from her bosom a small, well-filled jewel-bag, balanced it on her uplifted palm and, rising to her toes, sang, "At last, at last, _grâce au ciel_, money is easy!" "Yet at the same time my gifted granddaughter," remarked the old lady, in her native tongue and intent on her embroidery, "is uneasy, eh?" Flora ignored the comment. She laid a second palm, on the upraised booty, made one whole revolution, her soft crinoline ballooning and subsiding with a seductive swish as she paused: "And you shall share these blessings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves"--she returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed the waist where the paper proceeds of the schoolmistress's gold still hid--"you shall never handle a dime." She sparkled airily. "No?" said Madame, still moving the needle and still in French. "Nevertheless, morning and evening together, our winnings are--how much?" "Ours?" melodiously asked the smiling girl, "they are not ours, they are mine. And they are--at the least"--she dropped to her senior's footstool and spoke caressingly low--"a clean thousand! Is not that sweet enough music to the ear of a venerable"--she whispered--"cormorant?" She sparkled anew. "I am sorry," came the mild reply, "you are in such torture you have to call me names. But it is, of course, entirely concerning--the house--ahem!" Flora rose, walked to a window, and, as she gazed out across the old plaza, said measuredly in a hard voice: "Never mind! Never mind her--or him either. I will take care of the two of them!" A low laugh tinkled from the ancestress: "Ha, ha! you thought the fool would be scandalized, and instead he is only the more enamored." The girl flinched but kept her face to the window: "_He_ is not the fool." "No? We can hardly tell, when we are--in love." Flora wheeled and flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just enough fluttered to play defiance while shifting her attack--