By eight o'clock, reading in Mrs. Melrose's upstairs sitting-room, that first room that she had seen in this big house, eight months ago, Norma began to feel just a trifle flat. Chris Liggett was one of the most popular men in society, in demand everywhere, spoiled by women everywhere. He had quite casually, and perhaps even absent-mindedly, kissed his wife's young protégée upon meeting her after an absence, and she had hastily leaped to conclusions worthy of a schoolgirl! He would be about equally amused and disgusted did he suspect them. "He likes you, you little fool," Norma said to herself, "and you will utterly spoil everything with your idiocy!" "What did you say, lovey?" the old lady asked, half closing her book. "Nothing!" Norma said, laughing. She reopened her novel, and tried to interest herself in it. But the thought of that quarter hour in the study came back over and over again. She came finally to the conclusion that she was glad Chris liked her. The room was very still. A coal fire was glowing pink and clear in the grate, and now and then the radiators hissed softly. Norma had one big brilliant lamp to herself, and over the old lady's chair another glowed. Everything was rich, soft, comfortable. Regina was hovering in the adjoining room, folding the fat satin comforters, turning down the transparent linen sheets with their great scroll of monogram, and behind Regina were Joseph and Emma, and all the others, and behind them the great city and all the world, eager to see that this old woman, who had given the world very little real service in her life, should be shielded and warmed and kept from the faintest dream of need. Money was a strange thing, Norma mused. What should she do, if--as her shamed and vague phrase had it--if "something happened" to Aunt Marianna, and she was not even mentioned in her will? Of course it was a hateful thing to think of, and a horrible thing, sitting here opposite Aunt Marianna in the comfortable upstairs sitting-room, but the thought would come. Norma wished that she knew. She would not have shortened the old lady's life by a single second, and she would have died herself rather than betray this thought to any one, even to Wolf--even to Rose! But it suddenly seemed to her very unjust that she could be picked out of Biretta's bookstore to-day, by Aunt Marianna's pleasure, and perhaps put back there to-morrow through no fault of her own. They were all kind, they were all generous, but this was not just. She wanted the delicious and self-respecting feeling of being a young woman with "independent means." Such evenings as this one, even in the wonderful Melrose house, were undeniably dull. She and Rose had often grumbled, years ago, because there were so many of these quiet times, in between the Saturday and Sunday excitements. But Norma, in those days, had never supposed that dulness was ever compatible with wealth and ease.