worse every year."

"I'd like to be your waitress, mother." For the first time the girl lost
her perfect poise, and the color fluctuated in her cheek. She clasped
her hands. "It would be heaven compared with the feeling, the sickening,
appalling suspicion, that we are becoming akin to the adventuresses we
read of, the pretty, luxurious women who live by their wits."

"Silence!" commanded Mrs. Evringham, her eyes flashing and her effective
black-clothed figure drawn up.

Eloise sighed again. "I didn't expect to accomplish anything by this
talk," she said, relapsing into listlessness.

"What did you expect then? Merely to be disagreeable? I hope you may be
as successful in worthier undertakings. Now listen. Some of the plans
you have suggested at various times might be sensible if you were a
plain girl. Your beauty is as tangible an asset as money would be; but
beauty requires money. You must have it. Your poor father might have
left it to you, but he didn't; so you will marry it--not unsuitably,"
meeting an ominous look in her child's eyes, "not without love or under
any circumstances to make a martyr of you, but according to common
sense; and as a certain young man is evidently more and more certain of
himself every time he comes"--she paused.

"You think there is no need for him to grow more certain of me?" asked
Eloise.

"You might have saved us the disagreeables of this interview. And
one thing more," impressively, "you evidently are not taking into