Mrs. Leuniger realized perfectly the meaning of £5000 a year. Bertie’s other advantages, such, for instance, as his connection with the Norwoods, had little weight with her. If he had been one of the Cardozos, or of the Silberheims--the great Jewish bankers--she could have understood all this fuss about his family. “Who are the girls to marry in these days?” Mrs. Sachs said later on, as she, Mrs. Quixano, and Mrs. Leuniger sat in consultation. “If I had unmarried daughters I should tell them they would have to marry Germans.” The extreme nature of this statement did not fail to impress her hearers. While the matrons sat in conclave in the primrose-coloured drawing-room, Judith up stairs in her own little domain was trying to come to a decision on the subject of their discussion. She had asked for time, for a few days in which to make up her mind, and of these, three had already gone by. But from the first there had always been this thing in her mind, this thing from which she shrank--that she would marry Bertie. Her loneliness, her utter isolation of spirit in that crowded house where she was for the moment a centre of interest, a mark for observation, are difficult to realize. A severance of home ties had been to a certain extent involved in her change of homes. Her nearest approach to intimate women friends were Rose and Esther. As for the one friend who had wound his way into her reserved, exclusive soul, who had made a path into her inclosed, restricted life, he was her friend no more. Reuben, oh, humiliation! had shown her plainly that he was afraid of her; afraid of any claims she might choose to base on the friendship which had existed between them. There was always this thought in her mind goading her. On the faces round her she read nothing but anxiety that she would make up her mind without delay. She knew what was expected of her. Sometimes she thought she could have borne it better if some one had said outright: “We know that you love Reuben; that Reuben loves you after a fashion. But it is no good crying for the moon; take your half loaf and be thankful for it.” It was this absolute, stony ignoring of all that had gone before which seemed to crush the life out of her. She was growing to feel that in loving Reuben she had committed a crime too shameful for decent people even to speak of. That Reuben had ever loved her she now doubted. It had all been a chimera of the emotional female brain, of which Reuben, who was subject, as we know, to occasional lapses of taste, had often confided to her his contempt. Yet even now there were moments when, remembering all that had gone before, it seemed to her impossible that Reuben should do long without her. If she flew in the face of nature and said “Yes” to Bertie, surely he would come forward and protest against such an outrage. Every day she devoured the scraps of news which the papers contained respecting the coming election at St. Baldwin’s.