He hesitated. "I suppose it is as much ours as ever," he said.
"And how much is that?" she asked impatiently.
"It is ours as a trust for our people."
She stared in honest wonder. These were new signs in her heaven.
"A trust? A trust? I am not sure that I know what that means. Is the money ours or theirs?"
He hesitated. "In strict honour, it is ours only as long as we spend it for their benefit."
She turned aside to examine an enamelled patch-box by Van Blarenberghe which the court jeweller had newly received from Paris. When she raised her eyes she said: "And if we do not spend it for their benefit—?"
Odo glanced about the room. He looked at the delicate adornment of the walls, the curtains of Lyons damask, the crystal girandoles, the toys in porcelain of Saxony and Sevres, in bronze and ivory and Chinese lacquer, crowding the tables and cabinets of inlaid wood. Overhead floated a rosy allegory by Luca Giordano; underfoot lay a carpet of the royal manufactory of France; and through the open windows he heard the plash of the garden fountains and saw the alignment of the long green alleys set with the statues of Roman patriots.
"Then," said he—and the words sounded strangely in his own ears—"then they may take it from us some day—and all this with it, to the very toy you are playing with."
She rose, and from her fullest height dropped a brilliant smile on him; then her eyes turned to the portrait of the great fighting Duke set in the monumental stucchi of the chimney-piece.