“Oh no, nothing of the kind!” said her ladyship. “She can’t abide him. I can vouch for that! And if you are thinking that he might offer for her, I believe he is too proud. If anything of that nature has entered his head, you may depend upon it, it is not marriage he means!”
He agreed with this, and sat for a few moments, idly casting his dice on to the table at his elbow. After a frowning pause, he raised his eyes to her ladyship’s face, and said bluntly: “How do your accounts stand, ma’am?”
She shuddered. “Don’t ask me that! Of course, it is a relief to get that mortgage into my hands, but when I think of the twenty thousand pounds he offered to give Deb, I declare I could weep!”
“I was thinking much the same meself,” he said. “This is a bird that lays golden eggs, ma’am, and it would be a pity, so it would, to let it slip through our fingers before we have one of those same eggs.,
“I see no need for you to talk in that vulgar way, Lucius,” said her ladyship, with dignity. “But in the main I agree with what you say. Only Deb is so proud she will not take a penny from anyone, so you may as well stop thinking of that twenty thousand.”
He grinned. “And has your ladyship stopped thinking of it?” he inquired.
“No one,” said her ladyship severely, “can stop thinking of such a sum all in a trice, but I assure you it does not creep into my mind now above once or twice in a day.”
“If I could lay my hands on it, it’s not meself that would be forgetting an old friend,” he observed, watching the fall of his dice.
“I am sure you would not,” replied her ladyship, gratified by this kind thought, “and if I had such a sum I would not forget you. But Deb is determined not to touch a penny of Ravenscar’s money, so there is nothing for us to do but to put it out of our minds.”
“Faith, I’m disappointed in the darlin’!” said Mr Kennet. “I’m thinking I’ll be taking a hand in the game meself.”