"Money," said Dearest, "being a thing which people cannot go on finding for ever; and as for horses, no one would be able to afford them, even if the war dragged on."
Darby saw Gheena's face cloud and assume an expression of one who had heard this particular form of foreboding too often.
The two girls jumped into the back of the car when they were starting, leaving Mr. Freyne to sit alone, wondering as he let in his clutch what petrol would go to and how long he would keep the car going.
"And if we were poor," stormed Gheena—"if we were, but we're not; and it's all mine, or it will be when I——"
She nodded icily to Stafford who was jogging home alone, riding rather close to Mrs. Weston and Mr. Keefe, who, with their heads almost touching, ambled in front of him through the opal twilight.
The sweetness of a spring morning was broken next day by the arrival of the motor from Cahercalla, with an urgent message saying that Mr. Lancelot was not well, and wished Miss Gheena to come over.
Gheena went without enthusiasm. It was a sunny morning, and she knew that she would find Lancelot lying down and basking in a huge arm-chair in the morning room, with an enormous fire and all the windows shut. There would be a smell of beef-tea and toast, coupled with that of a variety of tonics and cotton-wool, and Lancelot would betray the peevishness engendered by lack of exercise and too much heat.
As she had thought, she was engulfed in the pale brown morning room. Mrs. Freyne was winding wool of a lank variety, rasping it off a chair-back with dexterous fingers, Evelyn was stitching flannel night-dresses, and Lancelot was drinking Bovril and eating toast. He brightened up when Gheena, holding the door open for as long as she could, greeted him, and he at once told her how ill he felt. Mrs. Freyne went on for a time with her winding, and remarked after a time, apropos of nothing, that she had just heard from Geoffery, her second son, and that Lancelot never seemed really happy at Cahercalla, and that Geoffery would love to live there. Here she left the room to see the cook, followed in a moment by Evelyn.
Gheena found herself alone with her puffily fat cousin, who suddenly showed some interest in life.
He said it was good of her to come over. He blushed and upset his mother's work-basket, and then asked Gheena if she had been listening. Gheena asked to what, with restrained impotence in her voice.