“I don’t think she knows herself. She’s too excited. I think she’s upset about a good many things. She seems to have been getting bad news from Chicago this last week or two.”
“Ah!” Lord Barnstaple walked over to the window. He turned about in a moment.
“I have felt a crash in the air for a long time,” he said pinching his lips. “But this last year or two her affairs seemed to take a new start, and of course her fortune was a large one and could stand a good deal of strain. But if she goes to pieces——” he spread out his hands.
“If Cecil and I could only live here all the year round we could keep up the Abbey in a way, particularly if you rented the shootings; but our six months in town take fully two thousand——”
“There’s no alternative, I’m afraid: we’ll all have to get out.”
“But you wouldn’t sell it?”
“I shall have to talk it over with Cecil. The rental would pay the expenses of the place; but I can’t live forever, and when I give place to him the death duties will make a large hole in his private fortune. I have a good many sins to repent of when my time comes.”
He had turned very pale, and he looked very harassed. Lee did not fling her arms round his neck as she might once have done, but she took his hand and patted it.
“You and Cecil and I can always be happy together, even without the Abbey,” she said. “If Emmy really loses her money she will run away with Mr. Pix or somebody. We three will live together, and forget all about her. And we won’t be really poor.”
Lord Barnstaple kissed her and patted her cheek, but his brow did not clear.