Ah, how she envied the girls of her age who had their own cars, who led their own lives, sometimes even had their own bachelor flats in New York! Except as a means to independence riches were nothing to her; and to acquire them by marriage, and then coldly make use of them for her own purposes, was as distasteful to her as anything in her present life. And yet she longed for freedom, and saw no other way to it. If only her eager interest in life had been matched by some creative talent! She could half paint, she could half write—but her real gift (and she knew it) was for appreciating the gifts of others. Even had discipline and industry fostered her slender talents they would hardly have brought her a living. She had measured herself and knew it—and what else was there for her but marriage? "Oh, well," she thought, for the thousandth time, "something may turn up … " which meant, as she knew, that her mother's cousin, old Tom Lorburn, might drop off at any moment and leave her the Willows, with enough money to get away from it, and from Paul's Landing, forever.

She heard her mother's fluttering knock, and Mrs. Spear came in, drooping, distressed, and dimly beautiful.

"Oh, Halo—asleep still? I'm sorry to disturb you, darling, but it's after eleven" ("I know, I know," grumbled Héloïse, always impatient of the obvious), "and something so tiresome has happened. The motor has disappeared. Jacob says somebody must have got into the garage in the night. The cook says she saw a dreadful-looking man hanging about yesterday evening; but the trouble is that the garage lock wasn't broken open—only it so seldom is locked, as I told your father. Your father says it's Lorry again; he's made such a dreadful scene before Lewis… . It's not so much the fact of Lorry's being out all night; but your father thinks he's sold the car. And if he has we shall never see a penny of the money," Mrs. Spear added, confusedly struggling to differentiate the causes of her distress, of which fear about the money was clearly by far the most potent.

Héloïse sat up in bed and gazed at her mother's troubled countenance. "Even now," she thought, "her eyes are beautiful; and she doesn't screw them up in the ugly way that I do." Then she roused herself to reality. "What nonsense—nobody stole the motor," she said.

"It was Lorry, then? He's told you—?"