Mrs. Pallet-Searing watched the happy young couple leave her house, and her face took on an expression little in accord with the worldly and cynical advice that she had given the girl a few moments before. From her corner of the limousine Leslie confided to Beekman: "Do you know that every time I do something, have something, or give something, now that we live on Bankrupt Row, up there on the Drive, I have to explain to everybody that it's my money, and not my father's, as most people imagine." "I wish I could do something for you or your father, but I'm only an atom of an aggregation here in New York, confound it!" Leslie looked at him gratefully, but went on: "My money must support the family. Father lost everything he had." "I--I didn't know that you had any money." He laughed uncomfortably. "I'm one of these chaps who has to blurt things out, Miss Wilkinson, and so I'll tell you just what I thought. Of course I didn't really want Peter V. Wilkinson to fail--I was sorry when I heard about it. But when I knew it had to happen, that it was inevitable--Oh, confound it, I was glad, and for my own selfish reason." "Very kind of you to gloat over our misfortune," was her brief comment, uttered by no means seriously. "I thought," went on Beekman, grimly, "that it would put us more on an equal footing, that perhaps I would have the right to----" "Oh, the right, did you say? I never thought you worried much over that," she said with truly feminine perversity. There was a pause. Beekman was the first to speak. "A terribly complicated matter, this making love to a rich girl. In the first place----" "Is this an argument before a court?" she inquired, playfully. "Before the last court of appeals," he answered quickly. "And the gist of it is this: How the deuce can a rich girl ever know that anybody ever loves her?" "Do you suppose she cannot tell?" "You can't. Look at the rich women who have been fooled--either fooled, or else satisfied to be sought for what they've got and not for what they are! You know them by the score." "I think I should know if anyone loved me." The man shook his head. "There is only one way to make the perfect test," he told her, "and that's impossible. To rid yourself of every dollar for all time, and then see what happens." The girl made no answer. "Yes," he went on, "of all the women in the world, the rich American girl, in my opinion, stands the least chance to be mated as she should be. If she marries money, ten chances to one it's money she marries and not a man; if she marries a beggar, she gets an adventurer. The reason for this, is: the honest American men will not aspire to the hand of a girl of wealth; and those are the very men that the rich girl ought to marry. Unfortunately, however, they are just as independent in their way as she is in hers. You ought to come down and be poor," he concluded, helping her to alight, for the limousine was now in front of the Wilkinson house.