'Only? Yet that is everything. People who are well up the ladder too often deride those who are fighting and struggling to get up higher. It is great folly or great ignorance to laugh. Social position, in such a country as ours, means independence, self-respect, dignity, all kinds of valuable things. You will throw these all away--yet your grandfathers won them for you by hard work. You are yourself a gentlewoman--why? Because they made their way up in the world, and placed their sons also in the way to climb. That is how families are made--by three generations at least of steady work uphill.' Elsie shook her head sadly. 'We can only hope,' she murmured. 'One more word, and I will say no more. Remember, that love or no love, resignation or not, patience or not, physical comfort is the beginning and the foundation of all happiness. If you and your husband can satisfy the demands of physical comfort, you may be happy--or at least resigned. If not---- Well, Elsie, that is all. I should not have said so much had I not promised your mother and your sister. I am touched, I confess, by your courage and your resolution.' 'We mean never to regret, never to look back, and always to work and hope,' said Elsie. 'You will remain our friend, Mr. Dering?' 'Surely, surely.--And now----' 'Now'--Elsie rose--'I will not keep you any longer. You have said what you wished to say very kindly, and I thank you.' 'No.--Sit down again; I haven't done with you yet, child. Sit down again. No more about that young villain--George Austin.' He spoke so good-humouredly, that Elsie complied wondering, but no longer afraid. 'Nothing more about your engagement. Now, listen carefully, because this is most important. Three or four years ago a person wrote to me. That person informed me that he--for convenience we will call the person a man--wished to place a certain sum of money in my hands in trust--for you.' 'For me? Do you mean--in trust? What is Trust?' 'He gave me this sum of money to be given to you on your twenty-first birthday.' 'Oh!' Elsie sat up with open eyes. 'A sum of money?--and to me?' 'With a condition or two. The first condition was, that the interest should be invested as it came in: the next, that I was on no account--mind, on no account at all--to tell you or any one of the existence of the gift or the name of the donor. You are now twenty-one. I have been careful not to afford you the least suspicion of this happy windfall until the time should arrive. Neither your mother, nor your sister, nor your lover, knows or suspects anything about it.' 'Oh!' Elsie said once more. An interjection may be defined as a prolonged monosyllable, generally a vowel, uttered when no words can do justice to the subject.