“Please go on.”

“Your mother considers that Mr. Bell’s means would go further in England than in America.  She asked me to make inquiries; and I must say, judging from the price of umbrellas and woollen goods, I think they would.”

Elfrida was silent for a moment, looking steadfastly at the possibility Miss Kimpsey had developed.  “What a complication!” she said, half to herself; and then, observing Miss Kimpsey’s look of astonishment:  “I had no idea of that,” she repeated; “I wonder that they have not mentioned it.”

“Well then!” said Miss Kimpsey, with sudden compunction, “I presume they wanted to surprise you.  And I’ve gone and spoiled it!”

“To surprise me!” Elfrida repeated in her absorption.  “Oh yes; very likely!” Inwardly she saw her garret, the garret that so exhaled her, where she had tasted success and knew a happiness that never altogether failed, vanish into a snug cottage in Hampstead or Surbiton.  She saw the rain of her independence, of her delicious solitariness, of the life that began and ended in her sense of the strange, and the beautiful and the grotesque in a world of curious slaveries, of which it suited her to be an alien spectator, amused and free.  She foresaw long conflicts and discussions, pryings which she could, not resent, justifications which would be forced upon her, obligations which she must not refuse.  More intolerable still, she saw herself in the role of a family idol, the household happiness hinging on her moods, the question of her health, her work, her pleasure being eternally the chief one.  Miss Kimpsey talked on about other things —­Windsor Castle, the Abbey, the Queen’s stables; and Elfrida made occasional replies, politely vague.  She was mechanically twisting the little gold hoop on her wrist, and thinking of the artistic sufferings of a family idol.  Obviously the only thing was to destroy the prospective shrine.

“We don’t find board as cheap as we expected,” Miss Kimpsey was saying.

“Living, that is food, is very expensive,” Elfrida replied quickly; “a good beefsteak, for instance, costs three Francs—­I mean two and fivepence, a pound.”

“I can’t think in shillings!” Miss Kimpsey interposed plaintively.

“And about this idea my people have of coming over here—­I’ve been living in London four months now, and I can’t quite see your grounds for thinking it cheaper than Sparta, Miss Kimpsey.”

“Of course you have had time to judge of it.”

“Yes.  On the whole I think they would find it more expensive and much less satisfactory.  They would miss their friends, and their place in the little world over there.  My mother, I know, attaches a good deal of importance to that.  They would have to live very modestly in a suburb, and all the nice suburbs have their social relations in town.  They wouldn’t take the slightest interest in English institutions; my father is too good a citizen to make a good subject, and they would find a great many English ideas very—­trying.  The only Americans who are happy in England are the millionaires,” Elfrida answered.  “I mean the millionaires who are not too sensitive.”