“Well, what am I to do?” asked Bridget, as he sat silent.

“I’m blessed if I know,” he answered, and at once rose to his feet.

He saw that she was profoundly disappointed, and although it appeared plain enough that the transaction would in any case be regarded by her as mainly mercantile, he fancied that she would have been in other ways delighted if his answer had been different.

“Neither do I,” she said, with a sigh, “unless I make up my mind to gratify Colonel Faversham.  Why shouldn’t I?  Look upon this picture and on this.  A year or two at the outside, and on the one hand I find myself without a penny.  On the other, I have only to say the word and I make certain, as soon as I please, of a fair income, a good house and an excellent position in society; because, you know, I could hold my own.  You see me here living through a kind of interregnum.  I am just nobody!  But in Paris and other places it used to be different, and so I intend it to be again.  What else is there?  You make an immense mistake if you imagine me as a governess or anything of that kind.  What could I teach?”

“Anyhow,” answered Mark, holding out his hand, “you need not do anything impetuously.  At the worst your money will hold out for some time to come.”

“Oh dear, yes!” she cried more brightly, “and before it has all gone, why, I shall be provided with somebody else’s.”

Still she looked up at him rather pitifully, her eyes meeting his own, her chin invitingly raised with its delectable dimple.  Now, Mark wished devoutly that the idea of that dimple as a sort of point d’appui had never entered his thoughts, but there was the regrettable fact.  Of course he had hitherto always resisted the temptation, which was the greater because he knew that he need not fear opposition; but still, there was Carrissima and he resisted it again.

He went to Grandison Square the following afternoon as if to seek a corrective; and once in her presence marvelled at his own weakness.  Here was the woman, as somebody says, for him to go picnicking through the world with.  Not that the time had arrived just yet.  Mark was not without a sturdy independence.  Besides, there would be Colonel Faversham to deal with.  As soon as he had made a beginning in his profession, then would be the time to ask Carrissima to share his lot.

“Well, did you see Bridget?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” said Mark.

“If you appointed yourself her father-confessor she must have been a wee bit surprised.”

“The surprise was on my side,” said Mark.

“What about?” demanded Carrissima.

“The state of her finances.  All she has in the world is the remnant of two or three thousand pounds she inherited from her mother.  Rosser left her nothing, and she is calmly spending her capital.”

“But why,” suggested Carrissima, “should she go out of her way to enlighten you about her income?”