Isla's hungry eyes never for a moment left the speaking face of the woman at her side.
All the time they were moving slowly, but surely, away from the house up to the wide spaces of the great moor where the great silence dwelt.
"Tell me more," was the mute question of Isla's eyes and lips.
CHAPTER XII
THE HAND IN THE DARK
"It is all true--what you say," said Isla with a little shiver. "But what is to become of me? He was my life, my work, my all. I have nothing further to do in the whole wide world. My life is over."
"There is your brother," Vivien ventured to say.
She immediately saw that she had made a mistake--that here undoubtedly lay the sting and the crux of the whole sad situation.
Isla impatiently shook herself, almost as a dog might shake from him the element of water he dislikes. She made no remark, however, except to move her head in impatient dissent.
"I have no money, no prospects, no friends, I shall have to go out into the world and earn my bread. But how? That is the curse of people in our position--we are taught nothing, we are trained to take for granted that the world exists for us, that we are in some sense a privileged class. Then there is a crash, and if we go under is it to be wondered at or are we to be blamed?"