“You two came over to England,” he went on, “with Beatrice and your father. Beatrice left you because she disapproved of certain things.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“You may as well know the truth,” she said. “Beatrice has the most absurd ideas. After a week with Wenham, I knew that he was not a person with whom any woman could possibly live. His valet was really only his keeper; he was subject to such mad fits that he needed some one always with him. I was obliged to leave him in Cornwall. I can't tell you everything, but it was absolutely impossible for me to go on living with him.”
“Beatrice,” Tavernake remarked, “thought otherwise.”
Elizabeth looked at him quickly from below her eyelids. It was hard, however, to gather anything from his face.
“Beatrice thought otherwise,” Elizabeth admitted. “She thought that I ought to nurse him, put up with him, give up all my friends, and try and keep him alive. Why, it would have been absolute martyrdom, misery for me,” she declared. “How could I be expected to do such a thing?”
Tavernake nodded gravely.
“And the money?” he asked.
“Well, perhaps there I was a trifle calculating,” she confessed. “But you,” she added, nodding at the cheque in his hand, “shouldn't grumble at that. I knew when we were married that I should have trouble. His people hated me, and I knew that in the event of anything happening like this thing which has happened, they would try to get as little as possible allowed me. So before we left New York, I got Wenham to turn as much as ever he could into cash. That we brought away with us.”
“And who took care of it?”