with liberty, with an unfettered course for the spirit, with all the lovely, intangible, priceless best, which the world holds for its true lovers.  Wealth grasping at that best has a way of killing it—­as the child kills the butterfly. That’s what she’s afraid of.  As to Faversham”—­he got up from his seat, and with his thumbs in his waistcoat began to pace the room—­“Faversham no doubt is in a bad way.  He’s on the road to damnation.  Melrose of course is damned and done with.  But Faversham?  I reserve judgment.  If he’s in love with that girl, and she with him—­I can’t make out, however, that you have much reason to think it—­but suppose he is, she’ll have the handling of him.  Shan’t we back her?”

He turned with vivacity to his hostess.

Victoria laughed indignantly.

“You may if you like.  The odds are too doubtful for me.”

“That’s because you’re Harry’s mother!” he said with his sly, but most winning, smile.  “Well—­there’s the parable—­writ large. Mammon!—­how you get it—­how you use it—­whether you dominate it—­or it dominates you.  Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men—­it was the question in Christ’s day—­it’s the question now.  But it has never been put with such intensity, as to this generation!  As to your particular version of the parable—­I wait to see!  The tale’s not through yet.”

XVIII

A few days later, Lady Tatham received a letter, which she opened with some agitation.  It was from Lydia in London: 

“DEAR LADY TATHAM: 

“I have waited some weeks before writing to you, partly because, as Susy I hear has told you, I have been busy nursing my mother’s sister, but still more because my heart failed me—­again and again.

“And yet I feel I ought to write—­partly in justice to myself—­partly to ask you to forgive the pain I fear I may have caused you.  I know—­for he has told me—­that Lord Tatham never concealed from you all that has passed between us; and so I feel sure that you know what happened about a month ago, when we agreed that it would be wiser not to meet again for the present.

“I don’t exactly want to defend myself.  It still seems to me true that, in the future, men and women will find it much more possible to be comrades and friends, without any thought of falling in love or marrying, than they do now; and that it will be a good thing for both.  And if it is true, are not some of us justified in making experiments now?  Lord Tatham I know will have told you I was quite frank from the beginning.  I did not wish to marry; but I meant to be a very true friend; and I wanted to be allowed to love you both, as one loves one’s friends, and to share your life a little.  And the thing I most wished was that Lord Tatham should marry—­some one quite different from myself.