After dinner they were to make their own coffee in their old way, in the sitting-room; and after Marie had made it and brought his cup to him, Osborn leaned back in his corner of the couch to smoke and dream and talk happily, as a well-fed man does. His gaze, wandering round the room, found the piano, which he recognised with respect. "I say, you said the cushions were the only different things. There's that!" He nodded towards the instrument. "Yes," she said, her eyes following his, "there's mother's piano. I must tell you all about her will, Osborn; about everything. She left all she had to me." "The furniture and money?" "Yes. I sold most of the furniture; Mr. Rokeby helped me to arrange it and saw the dealers for me." "Good old Desmond! I must thank him for that." "He's been extremely kind." She looked into the fire. "_Extremely_," she repeated. "He advised me and told me exactly what to do." "Did the furniture make much?" Osborn asked with masculine interest in things financial. "A hundred and fifty pounds, odd." "Good!" he exclaimed. "I paid off all the rest of our own furniture instalments with it." "Oh, splendid!" he exclaimed in approval. "I hoped you'd think so. A hundred cleared it, as you would know." "So little Marie had fifty pounds odd for her own banking account!" "Not at all," she said, smiling into the fire as if she saw a very pleasant vision there; "I spent it." Osborn took his pipe from his mouth and sat forward. "Whatever on?" he ejaculated. His motion was surprise rather than disapproval. The money was hers, of course. But that a woman should have the temerity to spend fifty pounds odd in a few months when she was already supplied with enough to ensure comfort for herself and her family.... She lifted her head and looked at him. She dared him. The curls on her forehead danced and the amethyst eardrops twinkled; the shrug of her shoulders brought the mauve ribbons again under his notice. "As I told you, I'm going into accounts with you this evening." "Oh, well ... it's your own affair." "But husbands like to make wives' affairs their own, don't they?" She rose to find her account-books in a pigeon-hole of the bureau. Her colour had faded; her eyes were bright. Like all women she feared the hour of battle, while she did not flinch from it. So pretty she looked, standing there, that Osborn sprang up after her. He was just man--not husband, not master, nor judge, nor timekeeper of the home; but man, admiring and passionate. "I say, hang the accounts! Come to me!" There was again that about her which checked him. It was an almost virginal aloofness, though he would not have known how so to define it. When she sat down once more by his side he reached for his pipe again calmly and put it between his teeth, clenching them hard on the stem. "Well, pretty cat?" he asked in a strained voice. The old love-name fell upon cold ears. Opening the first book, she mused busily: