for all," the Colonel said, in the tone of a man whose mind is irrevocably made up.
"Not to please me, dear? not to give me the greatest possible pleasure I could have?" she urged, taking hold of his sleeve, and pulling it gently as she tried to catch his eye. "You can offer her less first, you know," she went on; "and if she stands out, offer her more and more till she is satisfied. Hal, dearest, what in the world does the money matter? Surely we could be happy anywhere together upon half or quarter of it, so long as we only were together?"
The Colonel did not pluck his sleeve away, as he felt much inclined to do, but he looked moodily out of the window, instead of responding to the glance which sought his own. Frances's recklessly magnanimous disregard of money in larger matters, had before now annoyed him, but never so much as to-day. In the everyday household details he was disposed to think her a trifle stingy, and had more than once openly derided her cheese-paring notions and miserly regard for candle-ends; and this everyday penuriousness seemed to bring this other and opposite characteristic of hers into all the more strong relief. "Women were an extraordinary mixture!" he observed to himself, as many another and a wiser man has remarked before him.
"I tell you, Fan, that's all nonsense – the merest moonshine," he said authoritatively. "I don't mean that it isn't very good and generous, and all that of you, but you don't understand the matter at all. Madame Facchino isn't an adventuress, as you seem to imagine. She may like money well enough – no doubt most people do – but it isn't the money in this case she wants so much as the marriage itself, the position and the prestige, the whole thing. It is me she wants," the Colonel added, not without a certain solemnity.
Before Lady Frances could answer, the door was cautiously opened, and her brother's Italian valet appeared with a can of hot water in his hand, advancing with careful steps, for fear of prematurely disturbing his master's slumbers. He started back upon perceiving the two figures in earnest conversation near the window, and would have discreetly retired, but she felt that the discussion had already been sufficiently prolonged, and that nothing would at present be gained by continuing it, so withdrew instead to her own room, leaving her brother to continue his interrupted toilet. At breakfast the servants were also present, and the conversation was therefore kept to generalities; but in the course of the day they recurred to the previous topic, and at last the Colonel agreed to write a sort of modified version of the letter first sketched out by his sister, protesting vehemently all the time that he knew that it wasn't the least use, and would merely make a horrible rumpus for nothing, but that he just did it to content her, and to prove to her how entirely she was in the wrong.
All that day they waited in a state of feverish suspense, expecting every moment to see the door fly widely open, and Madame Facchino appear upon the threshold. Their attitude was wasted, however. No Madame Facchino appeared, neither did she write or send. In the course of the following day, however, there did arrive a short note of two lines, requesting the Colonel would kindly look in that evening. She had a relaxed throat which confined her to the house, otherwise she would not have troubled him, she said. To
