him."

For Mrs. Upton was now gathering up her innocent work, preparatory, it was
evident, to departure.

"You are not displeased, dear!" Imogen protested as she rose, not angry,
not injured--Jack was trying to make it out--but full of a soft withdrawal.
"Please don't go. I so want you and Jack to see something of each other."

"I will come back presently," said Mrs. Upton. And so she left them. Jack's
thin face had flushed.

"She means that _she_ won't talk quite frankly before you, you see," said
Imogen. "Don't mind, dear Jack, she is full of these foolish little
conventionalities; she cares so tremendously about the forms of things; I
simply pay no attention; that's the best way. But it's quite true, Jack; I
don't know that I can afford to have my friends come and stay with me any
more. Apparently mama and papa, in their so different ways, have been very
extravagant; and I, too, Jack, have been extravagant. I never knew that I
mustn't be. The money was given to me as I asked for it--and there were
so many, so many claims,--oh, I can't say that I'm sorry that it is gone
as it went. 'But now that we are very poor, I want it to be my pleasures,
rather than hers, that are cut off; she depends so upon her pleasures, her
comforts. She depends more upon her maid, for instance, than I do even upon
my friends. To go without Mary this winter will be hard, of course, but our
love is founded on deeper things than seeing and speaking; and mama would
feel it tragic, I'm quite sure, to have to do up her own hair."

"Good heaven, my dear Imogen! if you are so poor, surely she can learn to
do up her own hair!" Jack burst out, the more vehemently from the fact