“I hate indelicacy in young girls,” said Mrs. Hardacre, freezingly. “One would think you had been brought up in a public house.” “Then let us avoid indelicate subjects,” retorted Norma, opening the first book to her hand. “Where is papa?” “Oh, how should I know?” said Mrs. Hardacre, irritably. There was silence. Norma pretended to read, but her thoughts, away from the printed lines, caused her face to harden and her lips to curl scornfully. She had been used to such scenes with her mother ever since she had worn a long frock, and that was seven years ago, when she came out as a young beauty of eighteen. The story of financial embarrassment had lost its fine edge of persuasion by overtelling. She had almost ceased to believe in it, and the lingering grain of credence she put aside with the cynical feeling that it was no great concern of hers, so long as her usual round of life went on. She had two hundred a year of her own, all of which she spent in dress, so that in that one particular at least, if she chose to be economical, she was practically independent. Money for other wants was generally procurable, with or without unpleasant dunning of her parents. She lived very little in their home in Wiltshire, a beautiful and stately young woman of fashion being a decorative adjunct to smart country-house parties. In London, if she sighed for a more extensive establishment and a more luxurious style of living, it was what she always had done. She had hated the furnished house or flat and the livery-stable carriage ever since her first season. In the same way she had always considered the omission from her scheme of life of a yacht and a villa at Cannes and diamonds at discretion as a culpable oversight on the part of the Creator. But the sordid makeshift of existence to which she was condemned was not a matter of yesterday. In spite of the financial embarrassments of the maternal fable she had noticed no cutting down of customary expenditure. Her father still played the fool on the stock exchange, her mother still attired herself elaborately and disdained to eat otherwise than _à la carte_ at expensive restaurants, and she, Norma, went whithersoever the smart set drifted her. She had nothing to do with the vulgarity of financial embarrassments. As to the question of marriage she was as fully determined as her mother that she should make a brilliant match. She had had two or three disappointments--the unwary duke, for instance. On the other hand she had refused eligibles like Lord Wyniard out of sheer caprice.