"Oh, the want of money with a woman is chronic," replied Colegrove easily. "The right way to do would be to pay your bills and ask a smile in return." He looked at her with such frank admiration that it brought the colour to Alicia Vernon’s face; but she was not displeased with him; on the contrary, she rather liked the sense of power, of innate force, which was so plainly his. How trifling to him would seem the mountain of debt under which Alicia had always laboured, and which she had only managed to keep partially from her father’s knowledge. "I shouldn’t mind a woman spending money on toilettes, jewelry, carriages and such things. That would be just like buying toys," he said, still smiling. "I am a man of simple tastes--you would be disgusted at the plainness of my rooms at the hotel, but I can understand that white birds should have downy nests." Colegrove would have monopolised Mrs. Vernon, but Senator March would by no means have it so. He came up and began to talk about the coming house-party, taking Alicia into the library to show her pictures of the place. Then her eyes fell upon pictures of Senator March’s family home, which was in a near-by Eastern State, and the photographs he showed of it proved that it was a fine old Colonial house added to with taste and judgment until it was a beautiful and spacious mansion. Also he had a ranch far off in the Northwest, and his near-by country place in Maryland. "You have as many homes as a great English noble." "But they are not castles; they are only houses; and a man alone, as I am, has no home. This was my father’s town house; he was in the Senate before me, but you see that it is an old barn compared with the splendid modern houses in Washington. Then the home, in my native State, is where I was born, but I have lived there very little. After I left the university I travelled for some years, and then went into public life, and that has kept me pretty close to Washington. My own home is too far away to go to for the week-end, so I have this little place a hundred miles away in the mountains. I don’t know exactly how I happened to acquire the ranch. I went into a land purchase with some friends of mine, and the first thing I knew was that I had a ranch, and I don’t yet quite understand how I came by it. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I went out there, and found it a gloriously lonely place, with an adobe house and a courtyard, stuck up on the side of the mountain. The people out there told me to stock the place--I have the title to a good part of the big valley--I got a manager, and, strange to say, I haven’t been swindled. Every year or two I try to go out there for six weeks. It’s a superb climate and I live on horseback, as I did when I was a boy. I should like so much to show you the ranch which I found in my pocket one day." Alicia smiled and shook her head. "There is so much to see, and one can’t stay in America for ever: it is so expensive."