"But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?"
"She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is impossible, I suppose, for you to realise her complete dependence upon wealth—the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last her a month."
"I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave me."
"Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as much as possible in order to pay those she gave you."
"I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property," he said.
"But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should deem it for your interest to turn it over to you."
Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the attitude of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her practical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend its healing insight.
"But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause.
"I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all," she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little things."
An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny, like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense.