"Just fancy that plain little Daisy Edgell being engaged to a Liverpool man with heaps of money!" she remarked as they rolled homewards. "We met him at the Hubbards' last year, if you remember."
"I thought him very ugly and commonplace."
"Perhaps—but so rich! I wish you could be as lucky, May. What a pity there are so few really eligible men at Beachbourne!"
"If there were ever so many, aunt, I couldn't bear to marry again."
"And, pray, why not? You're only twenty-five; surely you are not going to mourn all your days for that precious husband of yours?" cried the spinster sharply.
"It is just because my first marriage was so unhappy that I never wish to marry again. As to marrying for money—I couldn't do it!"
"What nonsense! Isn't it done every day? It's all very fine to talk, May, but you know my income is only for my life, and I've hardly saved anything, so that when I die you'll be left without a home; and then what's to become of you and Doris? You must marry again—there's nothing else for it."
It was not the first time May had listened to such counsels; and she was well aware that, should her aunt die prematurely, she herself would again be homeless. Miss Waller was not the woman to deny herself in order to save money for her niece. She must have the fine house and carriage, the handsome dress, and the dinner-parties which her soul loved; and she found May very useful in arranging flowers, writing letters, and making not a few articles of personal adornment for her aunt with her clever fingers.
Their nearest way home lay through the quiet street in which Harold Inglis lived—or, rather, starved—and, as he chanced to be at the surgery window mixing a powder, he saw the carriage driving by. The sinking sun was burnishing May's golden-brown hair; and her profile, beneath her gauzy hat, looked very fair and sweet. He sighed, as he went back to his powder, for the contrast between her lot and his own seemed a little too glaring. He did not know that all the time she had only sixpence in her purse, while he could actually boast of half-a-crown!