“Not thankless—somehow—to you.” She gave me, this time, a friendly little nod, and went back to her story. We had dined together on this evening; I smoked my cigar and listened; everybody else had finished, and departed; properly speaking, the _salle-à-manger_ was shut. I had tipped the waiter to leave us one light. It shone behind her face, throwing it into relief; the rest of the room was in dimness. I had no difficulty at all in understanding that her “line of defense” had proved successful—only too sure and only too successful. “When I said just now that I didn’t desire success—at any rate beyond what was necessary to my self-defense—I spoke too broadly. I feared too much success; if Waldo came to love me, to ask me to marry him, I should have to deal with a situation the thought of which frightened me. But what a lot of things there were to make me desire that success! Some obvious and, if you like, vulgar—the name, the money, the comfort, the end of cadging and scamping. A little higher comes the appeal that dear old Cragsfoot made to me—I should love to live at Cragsfoot. Then I was very fond of all you Rillingtons; it would be in its way wonderful to belong to the family, to be one of you. And Sir Paget and Aunt Bertha wanted me—by this time I was quite sure of that. Especially Aunt Bertha—though at first, perhaps, mainly because I wasn’t Nina Frost! Indeed, I came to believe that my being at Cragsfoot at all just then was a plot of Aunt Bertha’s; she had scented the Nina danger and looked round for a weapon against it! All those things influenced me—I suppose, too, poor Mother’s obvious delight at the idea. But the chief things I’ve left to the last. One I can tell you quite simply—Nina Frost! Is that vulgar too? I daresay, but I think it’s human. She had declared herself my enemy. Who likes to see his enemy triumph? And she would think that I was beaten on my merits! If Waldo asked me, and I refused him, could I tell her that? Would she believe me if I did? Besides, my real triumph would be in taking and keeping, not in refusing. If I refused, she would step in—or so I thought. The other thing—the last thing—was, of course, what I felt about Waldo himself, and the way in which I should stand towards him. It was funny. I had had no sense of taking a chance at Venice—though I did take a chance—gambled and, as it had turned out, lost heavily; but there was nothing but just plain being in love in the case at Venice. Don’t smile—love of that kind is really very simple. But with Waldo—and in the circumstances—matters were very different. I liked him very much; he was such a change from Arsenio, about whom I was still, of course, very sore—sore, not angry. He was very jolly at that time; if he’d behaved rather badly to Nina, it troubled him, I think, almost as little as it troubled me—which was not at all! But, first and foremost, Waldo was an adventure. Great as my charms were—we’ve agreed about