'Yes, it can be altered at need,' said Clement, with a long breath.
'This house,' said Felix, returning to business, 'is clearly our own; and you will go on with us of course for the present, if we can live here. It has certainly been a priory, but I do not therefore feel bound to restore that; I have read and thought much about those religious houses, and I think that there is no call to give them up as things now stand.'
'If?'
'I must talk it over with some of the financial heads. Of course I wish it for the girls, and my own duty seems to lie here; but if it will not do, I must let the place till the entanglements clear themselves.'
'Let the place? What! and go on with the business?' cried Clement, in consternation.
'I must keep on the business any way.'
'Felix! Impossible! In your position—'
'I cannot have the position if I cannot have the business. Look at it: here is Bernard to be educated, and Lance to go to the University, and four girls without any provision worth naming, besides Theodore; and how is all to be done out of less than a thousand pounds a year, with this house and grounds to be kept up, and where people are used to see five thousand spent?'
'Could you not sell the business?'
'Of course I could; but judging by what I have gathered during this year, the capital I should receive would not bring me in anything in proportion to what I make now; and I cannot afford to lose so much.'