yet until this moment he had been unable to fathom her motives.
Even now it seemed almost incredible. And yet what meaning would
her words have other than the monstrous one which had smitten him
as a blackjack?

"Say--I mean, Eugenia--you don't want--you aren't trying--you
aren't working to--you haven't any idea of trying to get them to
make me a Lord, have you?"

"It is what I have been working for all these years!"

"But--but why? Why? That's what I want to know. Why?"

Mrs. Crocker's fine eyes glittered.

"I will tell you why, Bingley. Just before we were married I had
a talk with my sister Nesta. She was insufferably offensive. She
referred to you in terms which I shall never forgive. She affected
to look down on you, to think that I was marrying beneath me. So
I am going to make you an English peer and send Nesta a newspaper
clipping of the Birthday Honours with your name in it, if I have
to keep working till I die! Now you know!"

Silence fell. Mr. Crocker drank cold coffee. His wife stared with
gleaming eyes into the glorious future.

"Do you mean that I shall have to stop on here till they make me
a lord?" said Mr. Crocker limply.

"Yes."