“Isn’t he rather rich?” She allowed the question all its effect of abruptness.
Vanderbank looked round at her. “Mr. Longdon? I haven’t the least idea.”
“Not after becoming so intimate? It’s usually, with people, the very first thing I get my impression of.” There came into her face for another glance at their friend no crudity of curiosity, but an expression more tenderly wistful. “He must have some mysterious box under his bed.”
“Down in Suffolk?—a miser’s hoard? Who knows? I dare say,” Vanderbank went on. “He isn’t a miser, but he strikes me as careful.”
Mrs. Brook meanwhile had thought it out. “Then he has something to be careful of; it would take something really handsome to inspire in a man like him that sort of interest. With his small expenses all these years his savings must be immense. And how could he have proposed to mamma unless he had originally had money?”
If Vanderbank a little helplessly wondered he also laughed. “You must remember your mother refused him.”
“Ah but not because there wasn’t enough.”
“No—I imagine the force of the blow for him was just in the other reason.”
“Well, it would have been in that one just as much if that one had been the other.” Mrs. Brook was sagacious, though a trifle obscure, and she pursued the next moment: “Mamma was so sincere. The fortune was nothing to her. That shows it was immense.”
“It couldn’t have been as great as your logic,” Vanderbank smiled; “but of course if it has been growing ever since—!”