She nodded a thoughtful assent.  “Yes, that was my sad mistake,” said she.  “However, I’m going to do my best to repair it.”

He reflected.  “You must marry money,” he declared, as if it were a verdict.

“Either some one who’s got it or some one who can get it.”

“Some one who’s got it, I’d advise.”

“Bad advice,” commented the girl, her hazel eyes gazing dreamily, languorously into the distance.  She looked a woman on romance bent, a woman without a mercenary thought in her head.  “Very bad advice,” she went on.  “Men who’ve got money may lose it and be unable to make any more.  What a helpless thing you’d be but for what you have inherited and will inherit.  Yet you’re above the average of our sort.”

“Humph!” said Arkwright, with an irritated laugh.  Humor at his expense was a severe strain upon him.  It always is to those whose sense of humor is keen; for they best appreciate the sting that lies in the pleasantest jest.

“It would be wiser—­if one dared be wise,” pursued the girl, “to marry a man who could get money.  That kind of man is safest.  Only death or insanity can make him a disappointment.”

Arkwright eyed her curiously.  “What a good head you’ve got on you, Rita,” said he.  “Like your grandmother.”

The girl shivered slightly.  “Don’t speak of her!” she exclaimed with an uneasy glance around.  And Grant knew he was correct in his suspicion as to who was goading and lashing her to hasten into matrimony.

“Well—­have you selected your—­”

As Arkwright hesitated she supplied, “Victim.”  They laughed, she less enthusiastically than he.  “Though,” she added, “I assure you, I’ll make him happy.  It takes intelligence to make a man happy, even if he wants the most unintelligent kind of happiness.  And you’ve just admitted I’m not stupid.”

Arkwright was studying her.  He had a sly instinct that there was a reason deeper than their old and intimate friendship for her reposing this extreme of confidence in him.  No doubt she was not without a vague hope that possibly this talk might set him to thinking of her as a wife for himself.  Well, why not?  He ought to marry, and he could afford it.  Where would he find a more ladylike person—­or where one who was at the same time so attractive?  He studied, with a certain personal interest, her delicate face, her figure, slim and gracefully curved, as her evening dress fully revealed it.  Yes, a charming, most ladylike figure.  And the skin of her face, of neck and shoulders, was beautifully white, and of the texture suggesting that it will rub if too impetuously caressed.  Yes, a man would hesitate to kiss her unless he were well shaved.  At the very thought of kissing her Grant felt a thrill and a glow she had never before roused in him.  She had an abundance of blue-black hair, and it and her slender black brows and long lashes gave her hazel eyes a peculiar charm of mingled passion and languor.  She had a thin nose, well shaped, its nostrils very sensitive; slightly, charmingly-puckered lips; a small, strong chin.  Certainly she had improved greatly in the two years since he had seen her in evening dress.  “Though, perhaps,” reflected he, “I only think so because I used to see her too much, really to appreciate her.”