The blood leapt to Bessy's face. "My expenses? You seem to forget how much I've had to cut them down already."
"The household bills certainly don't show it. They are increasing steadily, and there have been some very heavy incidental payments lately."
"What do you mean by incidental payments?"
"Well, there was the pair of cobs you bought last month——"
She returned to a resigned contemplation of the letter-opener. "With only one motor, one must have more horses, of course."
"The stables seemed to me fairly full before. But if you required more horses, I don't see why, at this particular moment, it was also necessary to buy a set of Chinese vases for twenty-five hundred dollars."
Bessy, at this, lifted her head with an air of decision that surprised him. Her blush had faded as quickly as it came, and he noticed that she was pale to the lips.
"I know you don't care about such things; but I had an exceptional chance of securing the vases at a low price—they are really worth twice as much—and Dick always wanted a set of Ming for the drawing-room mantelpiece."
Richard Westmore's name was always tacitly avoided between them, for in Amherst's case the disagreeable sense of dependence on a dead man's bounty increased that feeling of obscure constraint and repugnance which any reminder of the first husband's existence is wont to produce in his successor.
He reddened at the reply, and Bessy, profiting by an embarrassment which she had perhaps consciously provoked, went on hastily, and as if by rote: "I have left you perfectly free to do as you think best at the mills, but this perpetual discussion of my personal expenses is very unpleasant to me, as I am sure it must be to you, and in future I think it would be much better for us to have separate accounts."