“Why?”
He hesitated.
“Well, my dear, you are just a little extravagant, aren’t you?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Am I?” she asked flippantly. “What is being extravagant? Is it buying new clothes when the old ones are worn out? Or is it,” and she cast a glance, which was full of sly, mischievous humour, at her husband’s grave face, “is it making an enormous collection of pictures at fabulous prices, and of antiques which may or may not be genuine, without being able to say whether, twenty years hence, they will have gone up in value, or down?”
Sir Robert winced.
“At any rate my pictures are a better investment than your frocks,” he said: “but we won’t quarrel about that. Ladies love pretty things, and the prettier the lady the more she loves them. I recognise that and I submit. So let me have the bills, and I’ll pay them.”
A furtive look of fear came into her face and died out again, and then she said:
“It’s very good of you, Bertie, but I really do want some money for myself too, money to spend as I like, to waste, perhaps. Won’t you let me have a couple of hundred to do as I like with?”
Sir Robert shook his head with decision.