Mark was saying, the umbrella crook hindering his utterance:
"We buy then an annuity of five hundred for your mother. . . ."
It was astonishing, though it spread tranquillity through her, how little this astonished her. It was the merely retarded expected. Mr. Tietjens senior, an honourable man, had promised as much years ago. Her mother, an august genius, was to wear herself out putting, Mr. Tietjens alive, his political views in his paper. He was to make it up to her. He was making it up. In no princely fashion, but adequately, as a gentleman.
Mark Tietjens, bending over, held a piece of paper. A bell-boy came up to him and said: "Mr. Riccardo!" Mark Tietjens said: "No! He's gone!" He continued:
"Your brother. . . . Shelved for the moment. But enough to buy a practice, a good practice! When he's a full-fledged sawbones." He stopped, he directed upon her his atrabilarian eyes, biting his umbrella handle; he was extremely nervous.
"Now you!" he said. "Two or three hundred. A year of course! The capital absolutely your own. . . ." He paused: "But I warn you! Christopher won't like it. He's got his knife into me. I wouldn't grudge you . . . oh, any sum!" . . . He waved his hand to indicate an amount boundless in its figures. "I know you keep Christopher straight," he said. "The only person that could!" He added: "Poor devil!"
She said:
"He's got his knife into you? Why?"
He answered vaguely:
"Oh, there's been all this talk. . . . Untrue, of course."