“Then you are living on your capital!” cried Mark.

“What else can I live upon?” she demanded.

“The interest—­naturally.”

“Now, do you really think I look the sort of person to live on a hundred pounds a year?” she said, throwing out her hands.

“But if you haven’t got any more!  Don’t you realize,” he suggested, “that the day is bound to come when you will find yourself out in the cold?”

“Oh yes,” she said, with a sigh.  “That’s when I get a fit of the miserables.  But something is certain to happen.”

“You anticipate a miracle?”

“It wouldn’t be far out of the natural order of things,” she replied.

“You expect some one—­one of your aunts, for instance—­to leave you a fortune!” said Mark.

“Oh dear, no!  I am not in the least likely to wish any one to die.  Really I think you are rather stupid this evening.  There might be a marriage, you know.  Such things do happen!”

“Anyhow,” he answered, “you mustn’t let yourself be frightened into marrying Colonel Faversham.”

Rising from her end of the sofa, Bridget glided to his, and standing close in front of him, so that her skirt brushed his knees, she looked insinuatingly into his face.

“Will you,” she said, “kindly tell me what I am to do, Mr. Driver?”

CHAPTER XI

MARK REPORTS PROGRESS

Mark Driver must have been much more obtuse than the most of his friends believed, to fail to recognize the invitation in Bridget’s demeanour.  Although he had not the slightest intention to profit by it, he could not pretend that for the moment it lacked enticement.

It seemed perfectly clear that she was holding the balance between himself and Colonel Faversham; and realizing that her income must some day inevitably be exhausted, shrinking from an appeal to her aunts at Sandbay, that she was determined to take Time by the forelock and seek safety in marriage.

Mark could understand now the significance of her behaviour during the first few weeks of their acquaintance, and while this offer of herself was in a manner distasteful, she looked so young, so seductive, so ingenuous while she made it that he must needs blame her environment rather than her disposition.

Bridget impressed him as a child masquerading in the garments of a somewhat audacious woman of the world, and he told himself that if she could be placed amidst more favourable surroundings, her natural character would shine forth triumphantly.  Moreover, he was by no means free from egoism.  He had enough vanity to experience some shadow of gratification, and even though the other candidate was no one more estimable than Colonel Faversham, there was, perhaps, a grain of satisfaction in the knowledge that he might have been first in the field.

As a matter of fact, Mark had never in his life been more attracted by Carrissima than on this first day after his return to London.  At the same time he was a young man and Bridget was an extremely captivating young woman.  Notwithstanding a sense of disapproval, it became judicious to take the precaution of saying “good-bye.”