"Nigel, don't! I wish you would not! Do leave me to tell. Uncle, you are not to worry Nigel and all the rest of us about that wretched money: I will not have you do it. I am of age now. It is in my hands, not yours. And I choose to have nothing separate. I am madre's child, just like Anice or Daisy. Madre has had terrible losses, and I am ready to work for her as I would for my own mother. I will not have them all bothered and plagued, just when they have so much to bear."
"And your fifty thousand pounds, child! Fifty thousand, mind you! Not a penny less!"
"You don't know anything about it. How should you? It is not fifty thousand, and I don't believe there ever was half that. Some of it is gone—I don't care how much—and it is nobody's concern except mine. If padre used some, he had a right, and I won't hear anybody say he had not. He was my father," cried the generous girl, ready to say anything in her hot defence. "And he meant to repay; of course he meant to repay; he would have repaid if he had lived."
"Father use Fulvia's money!" uttered Daisy.
"Daisy, will you hold your tongue? Have you no eyes? Can't you see? Nigel can't bear it—nobody can bear it. Why must you all try to make the worst of everything? Things can't be helped now—now he is gone! He never meant it—he told me so when he was dying. I will not hear hard words said of him. I tell you we will all have everything together, and I don't mean to allow a single word more about my money."
"Community of goods, in fact!" growled Mr. Carden-Cox. "That's all very fine, but—you mean—" he looked from her to Nigel and back again—"you mean, in fact—as I might have guessed—that your money is lost—flung away—squandered—stolen! Ay, stolen! Nothing more nor less than stolen! And that man—Browning!—Let me alone, girl," as Fulvia distractedly clutched his wrist—"Let me alone. I'll have my say. That man, Albert Browning, trusted by your poor father as the very soul of honour—he was a scoundrel! A mean pitiful scoundrel! A miserable base SCOUNDREL!"
Mr. Carden-Cox was beside himself with wrath, or he would hardly have gone so far.
Fulvia turned to Nigel in an agony.
"Nigel! Stop him!" she implored.
Nigel himself could not endure this. He had already started up, ashen white.