‘I’m so afraid that you haven’t really time,’ said Marian, who was chilled and confused by this show of hurry. She regretted having made the appointment; it would have been much better to postpone what she had to say until Jasper was at leisure. Yet nowadays the hours of leisure seemed to come so rarely.
‘If I get home at five, it’ll be all right,’ he replied. ‘What have you to tell me, Marian?’
‘We have heard about the money, at last.’
‘Oh?’ He avoided looking at her. ‘And what’s the upshot?’
‘I shall have nearly fifteen hundred pounds.’
‘So much as that? Well, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’
‘Very much better.’
They walked on in silence. Marian stole a glance at her companion.
‘I should have thought it a great deal,’ she said presently, ‘before I had begun to think of thousands.’
‘Fifteen hundred. Well, it means fifty pounds a year, I suppose.’