But if he has made up his mind to be idle, he is a contemptible cur if he
will let his wife keep him in his idleness." He spoke very quietly in his
soft voice, and leaned back in his chair.

"Well, then, you must never fall in love with an heiress," said Mrs.
Blake.

"Or you must work and win her," Lottie suggested almost in a whisper.

He smiled, but slightly shook his head with a look which she fancied meant
"Too late." Mrs. Pickering began to tell the latest Fordborough scandal,
and the talk drifted into another channel.

Lottie had listened as she always listened when Percival spoke, but she had
not attached any peculiar meaning to his words. But an hour or so later,
when he was gone and she was loitering in the garden just outside the
window, Addie, who was within, made some remark in a laughing tone. Lottie
did not catch the words, but Mrs. Blake's reply was distinct and not to be
mistaken: "William Pickering, indeed! No: with your looks and your
expectations you girls ought to marry really well." Lottie stood aghast.
They would have money, then? She had never thought about money. She would
be an heiress? And Percival would never marry an heiress--he could not: had
he not said so? How gladly would she have given him every farthing she
possessed! And was her fortune to be a barrier between them for ever? Every
syllable that he had spoken was made clear by this revelation, and rose up
before her eyes as a terrible word of doom. But she was not one to be
easily dismayed, and her first cry was, "What shall I do?" Lottie's
thoughts turned always to action, not to endurance, and she was resolved to
break down the barrier, let the cost be what it might. Her talk with
Godfrey Hammond gave a new interest to her romance and new strength to her