"I don't see what conscience has to do with it. When it is gone it's
gone."

"You will learn what conscience has to do with a man's spending if ever
you try to make both ends meet with Banks Bowen. I suppose he will go
through the form of speaking to me?"

"Mother dear! He has only just spoken to me. How fast you go!"

"Not fast enough to keep up with my children, it seems. Was it you,
Christine, who asked them to come here?"

Christine was silent.

"Where did you learn such ways?--such want of frankness, of delicacy, of
the commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your own
little schemes at a time like this!" Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must have
been Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced explanations of the
hunting-trip, she had never until now understood. He had taken the alarm
before she had, and done what he could to postpone this family
catastrophe.

Christine retreated to a deep-cushioned chair, and threw herself into it,
her slender hands, palm upwards, extended upon its arms. Total surrender
under pressure of cruel odds was the expression of her pointed eyebrows
and drooping mouth. She looked exasperatingly pretty and irresponsibly
fragile. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered, her breath came in distinct
pants.