“More right to ask her than I. See what she says. She’s Rawdon, every inch of her.”
“Perhaps I may. Of course, I can sell securities, but it would be at a sacrifice a great sacrifice at present.”
“Ethel has the cash; and, as I said, she is Rawdon—I’m not.”
“I wish my father were alive.”
“He wouldn’t move me—you needn’t think that. What I have said to you I would have said to him. Speak to Ethel. I’ll be bound she’ll listen if Rawdon calls her.”
“I don’t like to speak to Ethel.”
“It isn’t what you like to do, it’s what you find you’ll have to do, that carries the day; and a good thing, too, considering.”
“Good morning, again. You are not quite yourself, I think.”
“Well, I didn’t sleep last night, so there’s no wonder if I’m a bit cross this morning. But if I lose my temper, I keep my understanding.”
She was really cross by this time. Her son had put her in a position she did not like to assume. No love for Rawdon Court was in her heart. She would rather have advanced the money to buy an American estate. She had been little pleased at Fred’s mortgage on the old place, but to the American Rawdons she felt it would prove a white elephant; and the appeal to Ethel was advised because she thought it would amount to nothing. In the first place, the Judge had the strictest idea of the sacredness of the charge committed to him as guardian of his daughter’s fortune. In the second, Ethel inherited from her Yorkshire ancestry an intense sense of the value and obligations of money. She was an ardent American, and not likely to spend it on an old English manor; and, furthermore, Madam’s penetration had discovered a growing dislike in her granddaughter for Fred Mostyn.