‘Yes, I’ve been imagining him rich.’
‘So he thought he’d keep me happy and safe from being a prey to wicked men only wanting money, by making me poor.’
‘I see. Sincerely anxious for your good.’
‘Oh, he was, he was. He loved me devotedly.’
‘And are you poor?’
‘Very.’
‘Then why do you live in Hertford Street?’
‘Because that was his flat when he had to come up on business, and was just big enough for me, he thought. Where we really lived was in the country. It was beautiful there,—the house and everything. He left all that in his will to—to another relation, and nearly all his money of course, so as to keep it up properly, besides so as to protect me, and I got the flat, just as it is, for my life, with the rent paid out of the estate, and the use of the furniture and a little money—enough, he thought, for me by myself and one servant, but not enough to make me what he called a prey to some rascally fortune-hunter in my old age.’
She smiled as she used George’s phrase; how well she remembered his saying it, and things like it.
‘What a cautious, far-seeing man,’ remarked Christopher, his opinion of George not quite what it was.