"Where will she be now, do you think?" Mrs. Letham interrupted. "In town?"
"In town for certain. She'd be sure to be where she could always get earliest news of the boy."
"In the town house? Burdon House in Mount Street, you said, didn't you? Have you ever been there? What's it like?"
"No, never been in. A whacking great place, from the outside. That's where she'll be all right, unless they've sold it."
Mrs. Letham gave him a sudden full attention. "Sold it? Why should they have sold it?"
"The ancient reason—want of money," he replied lightly.
She made no response nor responsive movement; yet some emotion that she had seemed to communicate itself to him, for looking down at her, half-whimsically, half-gravely, "I say, you don't think we've come into untold wealth, do you, Nellie?" he said.
She took her hand sharply from his arm. Much that he had said, though she could not have analysed why, had caused her kinder self to ebb. Now it left her. She answered him by asking him: "What of all those names you told me? Tell me them again."
"The property? The Burdon Old Manor property? Little Letham, and Shepwell, and Burdon, and Abbess Roding, and Nunford, and Market Roding: those, do you mean?"
"Yes, I mean those. How do you mean 'the ancient reason, want of money'?"