"Oh, but surely!" exclaimed Virginia. "You've promised, haven't you? Humphrey told me it was arranged that he should live in the dower-house when he was married."
"He did, did he? Seems to me Master Humphrey is counting his chickens before they are hatched. No, I never promised. I never promised him anything. At least, I believe I did promise him a certain allowance, which is to be increased from another quarter. But beyond that nothing was said definitely."
"No, but it was implied. Oh, Mr. Clinton, please don't make us the cause of disappointment to others. We don't want it. We shall be very well off as it is. We don't want any more, really we don't. Dick has a fine position, handsomely paid, and I have money of my own too, you know, and a good deal of it."
For the first time the Squire frowned. "I suppose you have," he said shortly. "But to tell you the plain truth, I don't like the quarter it comes from, and I very much doubt if Dick does either."
"I don't much, either," said Virginia, smiling to herself.
"I'm glad of that, at any rate. No, you're loyal enough to Dick. You'll be able to forget the past; it hasn't soiled you. That's what I was afraid of, and I see I was wrong. Still, this money—it's stuck in my throat as much as anything."
"Well, then," said Virginia, "it need not stick in your throat any longer. I know what you think as to where it came from. Dick thought the same, and it stuck in his throat too, till I told him the truth. Now I'll tell it to you. It's my own money, every cent of it, and it came to me after—after my husband died. I have nothing that comes from him. I wouldn't keep it if I had. I'm an heiress, Mr. Clinton—not a very heavily gilded one, it's true, and the money my uncle left me was made out of pork-packing, which is a dreadful thing to talk about in this house. Still, you must forget that. Only the capital sum comes from pork, and it's all invested in nice clean things like railways."
The Squire stared at her during this recital as if fascinated. The moment was almost too solemn for words. "Well, my dear," he said after a short pause, "you lifted one weight from me yesterday, and now you've lifted another, and a bigger one. Go away, and leave me to think about it."
He thought about it for some time after she had left him, propped up on his pillows, his mind growing ever lighter. In the midst of all his perversities, his dislike of the thought of his son living, in part, on money that had come from "that blackguard" had been an honourable and unselfish feeling, and the removal of the fear swept away with it every other trace of his long-nurtured objections to Virginia as a wife for Dick. Now all he desired was that Dick should return to his honoured place at Kencote, and all should be as it had been before, with only the addition of Virginia's charming presence to complete the happiness of the tie. He did not think at all about Humphrey, nor of the new interests on which, a week or so before, he had been anxious to pin his anticipations.
But Humphrey had to be thought of, all the same. Mrs. Clinton, coming into his room, said that Humphrey would like to come and see him and have a talk, and asked if he felt well enough to talk to him.