"It plays the devil with my nerves." Her case was hopeless.

If it had not been so in the beginning, she had ruined it by her irrefutable arguments, and while he rambled on moodily, making excuses for his neglect of business, she sat silently planning ways by which she might get the money for her mother.

To ask her father-in-law was, of course, out of the question; and Mrs.Fowler, beyond a miraculously extended credit, due probably to the shining bubble of her husband's financial security, was as penniless as Gabriella.

Unless she could find something to sell there seemed little likelihood of securing four hundred dollars in a day.

It was imperative, then, that she should find something to sell; and remembering her mother's tragic visits to old Mr.Camberwell, she ran hastily over her few personal possessions.