This was the last house in London where one might have expected to find a girl who was ready to despise wealth and to find her happiness in a condition of poverty. Elsie was completely out of harmony with all her own people. There is a good deal of opinion going about in favour of the simple life: many girls have become socialists in so far as they think the amassing of wealth neither desirable nor worthy of respect: many would rather marry a man of limited means who has a profession than a rich man who has a business: many girls hold that Art is a much finer thing than wealth. Elsie learned these pernicious sentiments at school: they attracted her at first because they were so fresh: she found all the best literature full of these sentiments: she developed in due course a certain natural ability for art: she attended an art school: she set up an easel: she painted in pastel: she called her room a studio. She gave her friends the greatest uneasiness by her opinions: she ended, as you have seen, by becoming engaged to a young man with nothing. How could such a girl be born of such parents? When she got home on Saturday evening she found her mother playing a game of double _vingt un_ with a certain cousin, one Sydney Arundel. The game is very good for the rapid interchange of coins: you should make it a time game, to end in half an hour--one hour--two hours, and at the end you will find that you have had a very pretty little gamble. Mrs. Arundel liked nothing better than a game of cards--provided the stakes were high enough to give it excitement. To play cards for love is indeed insipid: it is like a dinner of cold boiled mutton or like sandwiches of veal. The lady would play anything, piquet, écarté, double dummy--and her daughter Elsie hated the sight of cards. As for the cousin, he was on the Stock Exchange: he came often to dinner and to talk business after dinner. He was a kind of musical box or barrel organ in conversation, because he could only play one tune. His business as well as his pleasure was in the money market. 'So you have come home, Elsie?' said Mrs. Arundel coldly. 'Yes, I have come home.' Elsie seated herself at the window and waited. 'Now, Sydney'--her mother took up the cards. 'My deal--will you take any more?'