have had indigestion. Therefore, if father had not made a fortune
he would not have bullied her. Practically, in fact, if father
did not bully her he would not be rich. And if he were not rich--

She took in the faded carpet, the stained wall paper and the
soiled curtains with a comprehensive glance. It certainly cut
both ways. She began to be a little ashamed of her misery.

"It's nothing at all; really," she said. "I think I've been
making rather a fuss about very little."

Joan was relieved. The struggling life breeds moods of
depression, and such a mood had come to her just before Aline's
arrival. Life, at that moment, had seemed to stretch before her
like a dusty, weary road, without hope. She was sick of fighting.
She wanted money and ease, and a surcease from this perpetual
race with the weekly bills. The mood had been the outcome partly
of R. Jones' gentlemanly-veiled insinuations, but still more,
though she did not realize it, of her yesterday's meeting with
Aline.

Mr. Peters might be unguarded in his speech when conversing with
his daughter--he might play the tyrant toward her in many ways;
but he did not stint her in the matter of dress allowance, and,
on the occasion when she met Joan, Aline had been wearing so
Parisian a hat and a tailor-made suit of such obviously expensive
simplicity that green-eyed envy had almost spoiled Joan's
pleasure at meeting this friend of her opulent days.

She had suppressed the envy, and it had revenged itself by