"We won't discuss that, please," I said with hauteur; "and we won't be too emphatic about what is past. It is past. I'll find out what is a proper scale of expenditure for a young lawyer's wife in New York, and I shall not exceed it. I've been living very economically for the sphere that seemed open to me. Perhaps I ought not to have tried it; but I think you should blame those who lured me into extravagance and then deserted me. I've had a terrible, terrible experience! Do you know that? And I was within an ace of becoming an ornament of the British peerage. Did you know that?"
"Yes; I don't blame you for refusing, either; some girls don't seem to have the necessary strength of mind. No; I'm not blaming anybody for anything. Nelly, next week it will be a year since our first betrothal; do you remember? Haven't you, after all, loved me a little, all the time?"
He looked at me wistfully.
"At least," I said, "I didn't love Lord Strathay."
I didn't think it necessary to correct him as to my refusal of the Earl.
"We'll see if Kitty won't take you in again until we can be married," he said, jabbing the paper again and changing the subject almost brusquely. "If you don't want to go back to your aunt, that'll be better than a boarding house, won't it? You pay the girls out of this, and I'll look after the other bills. There's a good fellow. Now, then what's No. 18?"
I fingered with an odd reluctance the little roll of bills he handed me, though it was like a life buoy to a drowning sailor.
"You'd better," he said, with quiet decision, cutting short my hesitation. "The girls won't need to know where it comes from, or that I know anything about it. It's ever so much nicer that way, don't you think?"
I put the money with my pride into my pocket, and continued sorting out bills from the rubbish. In all we scheduled over forty before we gave it up. Besides the Van Nostrand painting and one or two accounts that probably escaped us, I found that I owed between $4,000 and $5,000.
"That is the whole of my dowry, John," I said.