“I don’t understand.”
“Mine’s dead money. It’s come to me through about six dead people—silently.”
“Getting a little smaller and a little more respectable each time, on account of the death-duties.”
“It needed to get respectable.”
“Why? Did your people, too, once keep a shop?”
“Oh, not as bad as that! They only swindled. About a hundred years ago an Elliot did something shady and founded the fortunes of our house.”
“I never knew any one so relentless to his ancestors. You make up for your soapiness towards the living.”
“You’d be relentless if you’d heard the Silts, as I have, talk about ‘a fortune, small perhaps, but unsoiled by trade!’ Of course Aunt Emily is rather different. Oh, goodness me! I’ve forgotten my aunt. She lives not so far. I shall have to call on her.”
Accordingly he wrote to Mrs. Failing, and said he should like to pay his respects. He told her about the Ansells, and so worded the letter that she might reasonably have sent an invitation to his friend.
She replied that she was looking forward to their tete-a-tete.