"It doesn't pay," I answered grimly.
"You are not going--behind?" she faltered, using the familiar phrase of the country in which she had spent as yet but three weeks.
"We are going behind," I answered, angry with her curiosity: not old enough or experienced enough to see beneath it fear and misery. Angela said nothing more till we passed into the house. Then, with lack- lustre eyes, she surveyed our belongings, murmuring endless commonplace phrases. Presently she stopped opposite a photograph of a girl in Court dress.
"What a lovely frock!" she exclaimed, with real interest. "I do wish I'd been presented at Court. Who is she? Oh, a cousin. I wonder you can bear to look at her."
Without another word she burst into tears, heart-breaking sobs, the more vehement because obviously she was trying to suppress them. I stared at her, helpless with dismay, confronted for the first time with an emergency which seemed to paralyse rather than stimulate action. Had I sympathised, had I presented any aspect other than that of the confounded idiot, she might have become hysterical. Without doubt, my impassivity pulled her together. The sobs ceased, and she said with a certain calmness--
"I couldn't help it. You and your brother have this splendid ranch; you have experience, capital, everything looks so prosperous, and yet you are going--behind. And if that is the case, what is to become of us?"
"I dare say things will brighten up a bit."
"Brighten up?" She laughed derisively.
"That's the worst of it. The brightness is appalling. These hard, blue skies without a cloud in them, this everlasting sunshine--how I loathe it!"
Again I became tongue-tied.