I’m afraid I cursed the House of Commons: I was so much interested. Of course he’d follow her as soon as he was free to make her his wife; only she mightn’t now be able to bring him anything like the marriage-portion of which he had begun by having the virtual promise. Mrs. Mulville let me know what was already said: she was charming, this American girl, but really these American fathers—! What was a man to do? Mr. Saltram, according to Mrs. Mulville, was of opinion that a man was never to suffer his relation to money to become a spiritual relation—he was to keep it exclusively material. “Moi pas comprendre!” I commented on this; in rejoinder to which Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy, explained that she supposed he simply meant that the thing was to use it, don’t you know? but not to think too much about it. “To take it, but not to thank you for it?” I still more profanely enquired. For a quarter of an hour afterwards she wouldn’t look at me, but this didn’t prevent my asking her what had been the result, that afternoon—in the Regent’s Park, of her taking our friend to see Miss Anvoy.
“Oh so charming!” she answered, brightening. “He said he recognised in her a nature he could absolutely trust.”
“Yes, but I’m speaking of the effect on herself.”
Mrs. Mulville had to remount the stream. “It was everything one could wish.”
Something in her tone made me laugh. “Do you mean she gave him—a dole?”
“Well, since you ask me!”
“Right there on the spot?”
Again poor Adelaide faltered. “It was to me of course she gave it.”
I stared; somehow I couldn’t see the scene. “Do you mean a sum of money?”
“It was very handsome.” Now at last she met my eyes, though I could see it was with an effort. “Thirty pounds.”