The Independence of Claire. Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

since it secures the owner from the possibility of keen personal suffering.

      At the present moment Mrs. Gifford did, however, look really perturbed, for, after shutting her eyes to a disagreeable fact, and keeping them shut with much resolution and—it must be added—ease, for many years past, she was now driven to face the truth, and to break it to her daughter into the bargain.

      “But I don’t understand!” Claire repeated blankly. “How can the money be gone? We have spent no more this year than for years past. I should think we have spent less. I haven’t been extravagant a bit. You offered me a new hat only last week, and I said I could do without—”

      “Yes, yes, of course. It’s quite true, chérie, you have been most good. But, you see, ours has not been a case of an income that goes on year after year—it never was, even from the beginning. There was not enough. And you did have a good education, didn’t you? I spared nothing on it. It’s folly to stint on a girl’s education.—It was one of the best schools in Paris.”

      “It was, mother; but we are not talking about schools. Do let us get to the bottom of this horrid muddle! If it isn’t a case of ‘income,’ what can it be? I’m ignorant about money, for you have always managed business matters, but I can’t see what else we can have been living upon?”

      Mrs. Gifford crinkled her delicate brows, and adopted an air of plaintive self-defence.

      “I’m sure it’s as great a shock to me as it is to you; but, under the circumstances, I do think I managed very well. It was only nine thousand pounds at the beginning, and I’ve made it last over thirteen years, with your education! And since we’ve been here, for the last three years, I’ve given you a good time, and taken you to everything that was going on. Naturally it all costs. Naturally money can’t last for ever …”

      The blood flooded the girl’s face. Now at last she did understand, and the knowledge filled her with awe.

      “Mother! Do you mean that we have been living all this time on capital?”

      Mrs. Gifford shrugged her shoulders, and extended her hands in an attitude typically French.

      “What would you, ma chère? Interest is so ridiculously low. They offered me three per cent. Four was considered high. How could we have lived on less than three hundred a year? Your school bills came to nearly as much, and I had to live, too, and keep you in the holidays. I did what I thought was the best. We should both have been miserable in cheap pensions, stinting ourselves of everything we liked. The money has made us happy for thirteen years.”

      Claire rose from her seat and walked over to the window. The road into which she looked was wide and handsome, lined with a double row of trees. The sun shone on the high white houses with the green jalousies, which stood vis-à-vis with the Pension. Along the cobble-stoned path a dog was dragging a milk-cart, the gleaming brass cans clanking from side to side; through the open window came the faint indescribable scent which distinguishes a continental from a British city. Claire stared with unseeing eyes, her heart beating with heavy thuds. She conjured up the image of a man’s face—a strong kindly face—a face which might well make the sunshine of some woman’s life, but which made no appeal to her own heart. She set her lips, and two bright spots of colour showed suddenly in her cheeks. So smooth and uneventful had been her life that this was the first time that she had found herself face to face with serious difficulty, and, after the first shock of realisation, her spirit rose to meet it. She straightened her shoulders as if throwing off a weight, and her heart cried valiantly, “It’s my own life, and I will not be forced! There must be some other way. It’s for me to find it!”

      Suddenly she whirled round, and walked back to her mother.

      “Mother, if you knew how little money was left, why wouldn’t you let me accept Miss Farnborough’s offer at Christmas!”

      For a moment Mrs. Gifford’s face expressed nothing but bewilderment. Then comprehension dawned.

      “You mean the school-mistress from London? What was it she suggested? That you should go to her as a teacher? It was only a suggestion, so far as I remember. She made no definite offer.”

      “Oh, yes, she did. She said that she had everlasting difficulty with her French mistresses, and that I was the very person for whom she’d been looking. Virtually French, yet really English in temperament. She made me a definite offer of a hundred and ten pounds a year.”

      Mrs. Gifford laughed, and shrugged her graceful shoulders. She appeared to find the proposal supremely ridiculous, yet when people were without money, the only sane course seemed to be to take what one could get. Claire felt that she had not yet mastered the situation. There must be something behind which she had still to grasp.

      “Well, never mind the school for a moment, mother dear. Tell me what you thought of doing. You must have had some plan in your head all these years while the money was dwindling away. Tell me your scheme, then we can compare the two and see which is better.”

      Mrs. Gifford bent her head over the table, and scribbled aimlessly with a pen in which there was no ink. She made no answer in words, yet as she waited the blood flamed suddenly over Claire’s face, for it seemed to her that she divined what was in her mother’s mind. “I expected that you would marry. I have done my best to educate you and give you a happy youth. I expected that you would accept your first good offer, and look after me!”

      That was what a French mother would naturally say to her daughter; that was what Claire Gifford believed that her own mother was saying to her at that moment, and the accusation brought little of the revolt which an English girl would have experienced. Claire had been educated at a Parisian boarding school, and during the last three years had associated almost entirely with French-speaking Andrées and Maries and Celestes, who took for granted that their husbands should be chosen for them by their parents. Claire had assisted at betrothal feasts, and played demoiselle d’honneur at subsequent weddings, and had witnessed an astonishing degree of happiness as an outcome of these business-like unions. At this moment she felt no anger against her own mother for having tried to follow a similar course. Her prevailing sensation was annoyance with herself for having been so difficult to lead.

      “It must be my English blood. Somehow, when it came to the point, I never could. But Mr. Judge is different from most men. He is so good and generous and unmercenary. He’d be kind to mother, and let her live with us, and make no fuss. He is as charming to her as he is to me. Oh, dear, I am selfish! I am a wretch! It isn’t as if I were in love with anyone else. I’m not. Perhaps I never shall be. I’ll never have the chance if I live in lodgings and spend my life teaching irregular verbs. Why can’t I be sensible and French, and marry him and live happily ever after? Pauvre petite mère! Why can’t I think of her?”

      Suddenly Claire swooped down upon her mother’s drooping figure, wrapped her in loving arms, and swung her gently to and fro. She was a tall, strikingly graceful girl, with a face less regularly beautiful than her mother’s, but infinitely more piquant and attractive. She was more plump and rounded than the modern English girl, and her complexion less pink and white, but she was very neat and dainty and smart, possessed deep-set, heavily-lashed grey eyes, red lips which curled mischievously upward at the corner, and a pair of dimples on her soft left cheek.

      The dimples were in full play at this moment; the large one was just on the level with the upward curl of the lips, the smaller one nestled close to its side. In repose they were almost unnoticed, but at the slightest lighting of expression, at the first dawn of a smile, they danced into sight and became the most noticeable feature of her face. Claire without her dimples would have been another and far less fascinating personality.

      “Mother darling, forgive me! Kiss me, chérie—don’t look sad! I have had a good time, and we’ll have a good time yet, if it is in my power to get it for you. Cheer up! Things won’t be as bad as you fear. We won’t allow them to be bad. … How much does the horrid old bank say that we owe? Three hundred francs. I can pay it out of my own