“You know Rawdon Court is mortgaged to me?”
“I’ve heard you say so—more than once.”
“I intend to foreclose the mortgage in September. I find that I can get twice yes, three times—the interest for my money in American securities.”
“How do you know they are securities?”
“Bryce Denning has put me up to several good things.”
“Well, if you think good things can come that road, you are a bigger fool than I ever thought you.”
“Fool! Madam, I allow no one to call me a fool, especially without reason.”
“Reason, indeed! What reason was there in your dillydallying after Dora Denning when she was engaged, and then making yourself like a ghost for her after she is married? As for the good things Bryce Denning offers you in exchange for a grand English manor, take them, and then if I called you not fool before, I will call you fool in your teeth twice over, and much too good for you! Aye, I could call you a worse name when I think of the old Squire—he’s two years older than I am—being turned out of his lifelong home. Where is he to go to?”
“If I buy the place, for of course it will have to be sold, he is welcome to remain at Rawdon Court.”
“And he would deserve to do it if he were that low-minded; but if I know Squire Percival, he will go to the poor-house first. Fred, you would surely scorn such a dirty thing as selling the old man out of house and home?”