the convent, she was asked by George Eveleth to become his wife, it seemed as if she had reached the end of her cares.  She had the less scruple in accepting what he had to give in that she honestly liked the generous, easy-going man who lived but to gratify her whims.  During the four years of her married life she had spent money, not merely for the love of spending, but from sheer joy in the sense that Poverty, the arch-enemy, had been defeated; and lo! he was springing at her again.

“Ruin!” she echoed, when Mrs. Eveleth had let fall the word.  “Do you mean that we’re—­ruined?”

“It depends on how you look at it.  You will always have your own small fortune, on which you can live with economy.”

“But you will have yours, too.”

Mrs. Eveleth smiled faintly.

“No; I’m afraid that’s gone.  It was in George’s hands, and I can see he tried to increase it for me, by doing with it—­as he did with his own.  I’m not blaming him.  The worst of which he can be accused is a lack of judgment.”

“But there’s this house!” Diane urged, “and all this furniture!—­and these pictures!”

She glanced up at the Watteau, the Boucher, and the Fragonard, which gave the key to the decorations of the dainty boudoir.  The faint smile still lingered on Mrs. Eveleth’s lips, as it lingers on the face of the dead.

“There’ll be very little left,” she repeated.

“But I don’t understand,” Diane protested, with a perplexed movement of the hand across her brow.  “I don’t know much about business, but if it were explained to me I think I could follow.”

“Come and sit beside me at the desk,” Mrs. Eveleth suggested.  “You will understand better if you see the figures just as they stand.”

She went over the main points, one by one, using the same untechnical simplicity of language which George’s men of business had employed with herself.  The facts could be stated broadly but comprehensively.  When all was settled the Eveleth estate would have disappeared.  Diane would possess her small inheritance, which was a thing apart.  Mrs. Eveleth would have a few jewels and other minor personal belongings, but nothing more.  The very completeness of the story rendered it easy in the telling, though the largeness of the facts made it impossible for Diane to take them in.  It was an almost unreasonable tax on credulity to attempt to think of the tall, fragile woman sitting before her, with luxurious nurture in every pose of the figure, in every habit of the mind, as penniless.  It was trying to account for daylight without a sun.

“It can’t be!” Diane cried, when she had done her best to weigh the facts just placed before her.

Mrs. Eveleth shook her head, the glimmering smile fixed on her lips as on a mask.

“It is so, dear, I’m afraid.  We must do our best to get used to it.”

“I shall never get used to it,” Diane cried, springing to her feet—­“never, never!”