"Mortgage Blent? What for?"
He raised a hand to ask to be heard out. "But I should like to feel that I could at any moment lay my hand on a big lump of ready money—say fifty, or even a hundred, thousand pounds. I should like to be able to pull it out of my breeches' pocket and say, 'Take that and hold your tongue!'" He looked at her to see if she followed what was in his mind. "I think they'd take it," he ended. "I mean if things got as far as that, you know."
"You mean the Gainsboroughs?"
"Yes. Oh, anybody else would be cheaper than that. Fifty thousand would be better than a very doubtful case. But it would have to be done directly—before a word was heard about it. I should like to live with the check by me."
He spoke very simply, as another man might speak of being ready to meet an improvement-rate or an application from an impecunious brother.
"Don't you think it would be a good precaution?"
he asked. Whether he meant the marriage, the check, or the lady, was immaterial; it came to the same thing.
"It's all very troublesome," Lady Tristram complained. "It really half spoils our lives, doesn't it, Harry? One always has to be worrying."
The smile whose movements had excited Mina Zabriska's interest made its appearance on Harry's face. He had never been annoyed by his mother's external attitude toward the result of her own doings, but he was often amused at it.
"Why do you smile?" she asked innocently.