She sighed.
“Really, I have been rather unselfish,” she ruminated. “I suppose we should all have been quite flush for a month or two if this little adventure had come off.”
“Adventure?” Jacob repeated dubiously.
“That’s just how it seems to father,” she continued. “I suppose you wonder I’m not more embarrassed when I speak about him. I’m not a bit. As he remarked himself, he’s only trying to modernise the predatory instincts of a governing clan.”
“That’s how he looks at it, is it?” Jacob murmured.
She nodded.
“It’s in the atmosphere up here.”
“How’s the Glasgow Daisy?” he enquired, after a moment’s awkward pause.
“Broken ankle,” she told him. “They’re in a terrible state. He’ll have to cancel all his fights, and I heard Mr. Montague say last night that it will cost them the best part of a thousand pounds to settle with him.... Listen!”
A moment’s silence, then Lady Mary settled down to her oars.