Stella hid her face in Lady Verny's lap.
"I can't," she whispered. "You're too like him."
Lady Verny said nothing at all for a moment; she looked about the room. It was clean; for a London room it was quite clean, and Stella thought she had hidden all the holes in the carpet. Lady Verny's ruthless, practised eye took the faded, shabby little room to pieces and reconstructed the rest of the dingy makeshift home from it. She knew that Stella's room would be the worst of all.
"My dear," she said at last, "you are so very nearly a member of my family that I think I may appeal to you about its honor. Are you going to live like this and not let me help you? You are not strong enough to work, and this folly of poor Julian's won't make you any stronger. Since you can't live with me, won't you accept a little of what is really yours?"
"Money?" asked Stella, looking up into Lady Verny's face. "I would if you weren't his mother, because I love you; but I can't now. You see, Julian's taken his honor away from me; he's left me only my own. I know he'll think me cruel, and I'll never return what I did take. He'll think perhaps I would use it, if I needed it, and that may make him happier; but I mustn't take any more. I must be cruel."
"Yes, you're very cruel," said Lady Verny, kissing her. "Well, I sha'n't bully you, for I wouldn't do it myself. It'll only make my heart ache in a new way, and really, I'm so used to its aching that I oughtn't to grumble at any fresh manifestation. As to Julian's heart, he's been so extraordinarily silly that only the fact that folly is a sign of love induces me to believe he's got one." She rose to her feet, with her arms still about Stella. "I'm simply not to mention you at all?" she asked.
Stella shook her head. She clung to Lady Verny speechlessly, but without tears.
"And when I see him next," Lady Verny asked a little dryly,—"and, presumably, he'll send for me in about a fortnight,—he'll say, 'Well, did she take the money'? What am I to answer to that?"
"Say," whispered Stella, "that she would have liked to take it, but she couldn't."
"I could make up something a great deal crueller to say than that," said Lady Verny, grimly. "However, I dare say you're right; it sounds so precisely like you that it's bound to hurt him more than any gibe."