But Minna doubted not. She had gained her victory; gained it, it is true, at a price--but her ungoverned passion did not pause now to consider it. She saw Hugh nearly every day, sometimes at his chambers, sometimes in quiet meeting-places in the West End, now and then at The Lindens. She was happy. Her daily hour of sweetness gave retrospective and anticipatory joy to the other three and twenty. The elaboration of a distinctive attire for each interview was in itself an absorbing occupation. The undecided aspect of their relations afforded her, also, tremulous amusement. “It is rather sweet, this pretending, isn’t it?” she once remarked to him. “What pretending?” he asked, somewhat taken aback. “This long engagement. As if you are going to make your fortune in two years! It is quite enchanting. And at the end, I suppose orange-blossoms and rice, and all things nice. Eh?” She raised her eyes to his in lazy mockery--they were walking through the courts of the Temple--and slid her hand through his arm. “What would you have?” said Hugh. With a sigh she brought his ear down to her lips, and whispered: “You--and I’m not going to wait two years for you--but we’ll go on pretending a little longer.” “But I am in grim earnest, my Vivien.” “So am I,” she replied, with a smile. After this he realised the impracticability of his scheme. Minna was not one of those sweet future housewives for whom a man works and waits. There was too much “contagion of the blood” in the matter. Yet he swore to himself that there should be no irregular union between them, and that he would not marry her until he had freed himself from her father’s clutches. But how to raise the money was beyond his power of scheming. At this stage of embarrassment came the announcement that a son and heir had been born to his uncle. As far as the value of security went, the bond in Israel Hart’s possession was so much waste-paper.