"What's a fellow to do? You see how I am fixed about the title. These are kinds of things to which a man situated as I am is obliged to submit."
"Royal obligations, as one might call them."
"By George, yes," said George, altogether missing the satire. From any other lips he would have been sharp enough to catch it. "One can't see the whole thing go to the dogs after it has kept its head up so long! And then you know, a man can't live altogether without an income."
"You have done so, pretty well."
"I know that I owe you a lot of money, Lucy; and I know also that I mean to pay you."
"Don't talk about that. I don't know how at such a time as this you can bring yourself to mention it." Then she rose from her seat and flashed into wrath, carried on by the spirit of her own words. "Look here, George; if you send me any of that woman's money, by the living God I will send it back to herself. To buy me with her money! But it is so like a man."
"I didn't mean that. Sir Harry is to pay all my debts."
"And will not that be the same? Will it not be her money? Why is he to pay your debts? Because he loves you?"
"It is all a family arrangement. You don't quite understand."
"Of course I don't understand. Such a one as I cannot lift myself so high above the earth. Great families form a sort of heaven of their own, which poor broken, ill-conditioned, wretched, common creatures such as I am cannot hope to comprehend. But, by heaven, what a lot of the vilest clay goes to the making of that garden of Eden! Look here, George;—you have nothing of your own?"