"Not quite!" she replied, stifling a tiny yawn--"Nor do you! But
most things that are worth knowing I know. There's a lot one need
never learn. The chief business of life nowadays is to have heaps of
money and know how to spend it. That's Morgana's way."

Mr. Sam Gwent folded up his newspaper, flattened it into a neat
parcel, and put it in his pocket.

"She has a great deal too much money"--he said, "and-to my thinking-
-she does NOT know how to spend it,--not in the right womanly way.
She has gone off in the midst of many duties to society at a time
when she should have stayed--"

Miss Herbert opened her brown, rather insolent eyes wide at this and
laughed.

"Does it matter?" she asked. "The old man left his pile to her
'absolutely and unconditionally'--without any orders as to society
duties. And I don't believe YOU'VE any authority over her, have you?
Or are you suddenly turning up as a trustee?"

He surveyed her with a kind of admiring sarcasm.

"No. I'm only an uncle,"--he said--"Uncle of the boy that shot
himself this morning for her sake!"

Miss Herbert uttered a sharp cry. She was startled and horrified.

"What!. . . Jack?. . . Shot himself?. . . Oh, how dreadful!--I'm--