she was selfish none the less. It was her form of selfishness to enjoy the
luxury of spending money she hadn't got, just as it was Elwes's form of
selfishness to enjoy the luxury of saving money that he had got.

The point was very well stated by a famous miser whose son has since been
in Parliament (I will not say on which side). The old man had accumulated a
vast fortune, but, in the Scotch phrase, would have grudged you "the smoke
off his porridge." (He died, by the way, properly enough, through walking
home in the rain because he was too mean to take a cab.) He was once asked
why he was so anxious to increase his riches, since his son would probably
squander them, and he replied, "If my son gets as much pleasure out of
squandering my money as I have had out of saving it, I shall not mind."
Both the hoarding and the spending, you see, were in his view equally a
matter of mere selfish pleasure.

But I admit that the uncalculating spirit that lands people in debt is a
more engaging frailty than the calculating spirit of the miser. I know a
delightful man who seems to have no more knowledge of the relation of
income and expenditure than a kitten. If he gets £100 unexpectedly he does
not look at it in relation to his whole needs. He does not remember rent,
rates, taxes, baker, butcher, tailor. No. On the strength of it, he will
order a new piano in the morning, buy his wife a sealskin jacket in the
afternoon, and by the next day be deeper in the mire than ever, and wonder
how he got there. And there is Jones's young wife, a charming woman, who is
dragging her husband into debt with the same kittenish irresponsibility.
She will leave Jones on the pavement with a remark that suggests that she
is going into the shop to buy some pins, and will come out with a request
for £10 for some "perfectly lovely" thing that has caught her eye. And
Jones, being elderly, and still a little astonished at having won the
affection of such a divinity, has not the courage to say "No."