“Where does one buy horses?”
“At Norwich. Dad will tell you all about that. The hunting isn’t bad. My father is master of one of the packs that hunt near here. They begin cubbing at the end of next month. The shooting parties will give you plenty of exercise too, if you are fond of walking.”
“I like all these things,” she admitted, a little more earnestly, “and I love this garden. The peace of it is almost stupefying. I feel somehow or other that I should like to grow old in this atmosphere.”
“You never would,” he rejoined.
She laughed at him. Suddenly she was serious. She leaned forward in her chair.
“In a few minutes,” she said, “I must go in to see Madame. Before you leave, though, I want to ask you just one thing. What was the chief reason which made you in the first instance come over to China on that mad adventure?”
“Money,” he answered bluntly.
“But why do you need money? You have the most beautiful home I ever saw.”
He laughed with a bitterness which he took no pains to conceal.
“It is to keep that home,” he explained, “that we need money. Perhaps you scarcely understand the troubles that a certain class of English people have had to face lately, especially people who come of extravagant stock, like my father and me. It wasn’t pure love of adventure that took me out to China. It was the hope of saving Ballaston if I succeeded.”