"The idea of me in an office needn't disturb you," said Dick. "I don't intend to go into an office. There are two things I know about. One is soldiering, the other is estate management. If I'm to be prevented from managing the estate that's going to be my own some day, then I'll manage somebody else's in the meantime. There are lots of landowners who would be only too glad to give me a job."
"Tell me what it means exactly, Dick. Have you got to be a sort of steward to some rich person? I don't think I should like that."
He laughed and patted her hand. "You must get rid of some of your American ideas," he said. "The 'rich person' wouldn't want to treat me as a servant. And it isn't necessary that he should be very rich. I might not be able to get a big agency all at once. I don't know that I should want to, as long as there was enough work to do. As far as your money goes, Virginia, I shouldn't have any feeling about using it to help run the show. What I won't do is to live on it and do nothing. There ought not to be any difficulty in finding a place that would give us a good house, and enough money to run the stables on, and for my personal expenses, which wouldn't be heavy, as we would stick there and do our job. It would be just what I hoped we should be doing at Kencote from the dower-house. With luck, if there happened to be a vacancy anywhere, I could do better than that. But that much, at any rate, it won't be difficult to get, with a month or so to look round in."
"Then all our difficulties are done away with!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Dick, why didn't you tell me before? I thought, if your father held out, we should have a terrible time, and you would be as obstinate as possible about my money. I'll tell you what I have. I have——"
"I don't want to know what you have—yet," he interrupted her. "I didn't tell you before because I hoped it wouldn't come to that. I didn't want to face the necessity of giving up the service, and still less of having to give up Kencote. But now there's no help for it; well, we must just let all that slide and make the best of things."
She still thought his scruples about using her money to do what he wanted to do, and his absence of scruples about using it to do what he didn't want, needed more explanation. But she gave up that point as being only one more of the inexplicable tortuosities of a man's sense of honour. She was only too glad that the question could be settled as easily as that. But Dick must have felt also that it needed more explanation, for he said, "When I said that I had no feeling about letting you help run the house—of course, I really hate it like poison. But there is just the difference."
"Oh, of course there is—all the difference in the world," she made haste to reply, terrified lest they should be going to split, after all, on this wretched simulacrum of a rock. Then she had a bright thought. "But, Dick dear, you told me once how lucky your ancestors had been in marrying heiresses—not that I'm much of an heiress!"
"You're not an heiress at all," he said impatiently. "I suppose everything you've got comes from—from that fellow. Can't you see the difference? I hate touching his beastly money. And I won't, longer than I can help."
"But, Dick!" she exclaimed wonderingly. "Didn't you know? He never left me a cent. He hadn't a cent to leave."
He stared at her. "Then where did it come from?" he asked.