'And your mother?' Althea questioned, 'where does she live? Don't you stay with her ever?' She had gathered that the widowed Mrs. Buchanan was very pretty and very selfish, but she was hardly prepared for the frankness with which Miss Buchanan defined her own attitude towards her.
'Oh, I can't stand Mamma,' she said; 'we don't get on at all. I'm not fond of rowdy people, and Mamma knows such dreadful bounders. So long as people have plenty of money and make things amusing for her, she'll put up with anything.'
Althea had all the American reverence for the sanctities and loyalties of the family, and these ruthless explanations filled her with uneasy surprise. Miss Buchanan was ruthless about all her relatives; there were few of them, apparently, that she cared for except the English cousins with whom she had spent many years of girlhood, and the Aunt Grizel who made a home for her in London. To her she alluded with affectionate emphasis: 'Oh, Aunt Grizel is very different from the rest of them.'
Aunt Grizel was not well off, but it was she who made Helen the little allowance that enabled her to go about; and she had insured her life, so that at her death, when her annuity lapsed, Helen should be sure of the same modest sum. 'Owing to Aunt Grizel I'll just not starve,' said Helen, with the faint grimace, half bitter, half comic, that sometimes made her strange face still stranger. 'One hundred and fifty pounds a year: think of it! Isn't it damnable? Yet it's better than nothing, as Aunt Grizel and I often say after groaning together.'
Althea, safely niched in her annual three thousand, was indeed horrified.
'One hundred and fifty,' she repeated helplessly. 'Do you mean that you manage to dress on that now?'
'Dress on it, my dear! I pay all my travelling expenses, my cabs, my stamps, my Christmas presents—everything out of it, as well as buy my clothes. And it will have to pay for my rent and food besides, when Aunt Grizel dies—when I'm not being taken in somewhere. Of course, she still counts on my marrying, poor dear.'
'Oh, but, of course you will marry,' said Althea, with conviction.
Miss Buchanan, who was getting much better, was propped high on her pillows to-day, and was attired in a most becoming flow of lace and silk. Nothing less exposed to the gross chances of the world could be imagined. She did not turn her eyes on her companion as the confident assertion was made, and she kept silence for a moment. Then she answered placidly:
'Of course, if I'm to live—and not merely exist—I must try to, I suppose.'