She had learned from dealing with her grandmother that the way to get the most money was by seeming ignorant of money values, a cover behind which she could shame Madam Bowker into giving a great deal more than she would have given on direct and specific demand.

For instance, she could get more from the old lady than could her mother, who explained just what she wanted the money for and acted as if the giving were a great favor.

No, she must never get with him on a footing where he could discuss money matters frankly with her; she must simply make him realize how attractive luxury was, how necessary it was to her, how confidently she looked to him to provide it, how blindly, in her ignorance of money and all sordid matters, she trusted to him to maintain her as a wife such as she must be maintained.

She knew she did not understand him thoroughly--"we've been so differently brought up." But she felt that the kind of life that pleased her and dazzled him must be the kind he really wished to lead--and would see he wished to lead, once he extricated himself, with her adroit assistance, from the kind of life to which his vociferous pretenses had committed him.
Whether her subtleties in furtherance of creating a sane state of mind in him had penetrated to him, she could not tell.

In the earliest step of their acquaintance she had studied him as a matrimonial possibility, after the habit of young women with each unattached man they add to their list of acquaintances.