“If Mr. Pix goes I follow. Unless I can keep the Abbey—and if I’ve got to drop out——”
“You can suit yourself about going or remaining. Only don’t you tell Lord Barnstaple or anybody else whose money you have been spending.”
“I’d tell him and everybody else this minute if it weren’t for Cecil. He’s the only person who’s ever really treated me decently. And as for the Abbey——”
She paused so long that Lee received a mental telegram of something still worse to come. As Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes slowly and looked at her with steady malevolence she felt her burning cheeks cool.
“He wouldn’t have the Abbey, anyhow, you know,” said Lady Barnstaple.
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you jabbering with Barnstaple and Cecil not long since about the Abbey and its traditions, but either they hadn’t told you or you hadn’t thought it worth remembering—that there is a curse on all Abbey lands and that it has worked itself out in this family with beautiful regularity.”
“I never heard of any curse.”
“Well, the priests, or monks, or whatever they were, cursed the Abbey lands when they were turned out. And this is the way the curse works.” She paused a moment longer with an evident sense of the dramatic. “They never descend in the direct line,” she added with all possible emphasis.
“I am too American for superstition,” but her voice had lost its vigour.