“I would destroy anything when I’m worked up to it,” she said coolly. “Listen, Mr. Lauriston. The world makes distinctions as to the ways in which money is made; but it makes none as to the way in which it is spent; that can and does confer nothing but honour. Well, that part of the business is all I ask of you. As to the way I get it, why many a man of your trade might think himself blessed if he got his with so clear a conscience. There are no villages burned to give me a cocked hat, nor towns plundered that I may build a villa. My money’s my own, to do what I like with, and I choose to give it to my children to make them a position in the world. Nobody knows where it comes from, and nobody need know; and you can call it your wife’s money, not yours, if you are so particular. But she must and shall have it. Money is not made by looking at it by me more than by anybody else. I’ve worked for a fortune to give my daughter, because I mean her to have the best of everything in this world. I’m ready even never to see her except by a trick, but I won’t have my work foiled just at the last by any squeamish folly on your part; if you won’t have wife and fortune together, you shall have neither, I swear.” “You don’t seem to understand, madam, that your control over your daughter ceased when she became my wife.” “Did it?” retorted Chloris White, with scornful emphasis. “Well, you can entertain that opinion, if it comforts you, for a few days longer. But don’t depend too much on your legal rights when you are dealing with a person who lives outside the law.” “I can trust your love for Nouna to conquer any impulse you might have to do her harm through me,” said George, a bull-dog defiance rising in him and affecting the tone in which he uttered these sufficiently pacific words. “You can trust me to keep her from having her life ruined by any man’s pig-headedness,” said Chloris, throwing herself into a long cane lounging chair with much spirit in voice and attitude. “Do you think I brought up Nouna virtuously to secure her happiness?” she asked mockingly. “No, I meant her to be happy in spite of it. I meant her to enjoy all the honours of the great world, and all the luxury of the other one; I meant her to become what she has become, a society pet, a society lion, by the very ways and manners which in me are Bohemian, shocking, impossible. Oh! They are easily gulled, those feather-brained ladies of the ‘best’ society. However, it is ‘the best,’ and so I mean my daughter to keep there.” “You don’t understand these people,” said George, disgusted by her shameless cynicism, but resolved to go through with the contest, and to make the best terms he could. “She has made friends among them now, real friends. When they hear she has lost her fortune they will simply try to make up for the loss by inviting her more, making more fuss with her than ever.” Chloris White shook her head contemptuously.