“Get your sky-pilot to help you out of it. I won’t. Not a penny do I pay. Seven thousand dollars!”
“Father, a hundred thousand could not make any difference to you,” she cried. “You must let me have the money. Take it out of my mother’s allowance.”
“What allowance? Who told you anything about any allowance?”
“Father, you’re an old man, and your memory is failing you. You know, I’m entitled to an allowance from my mother’s money. You don’t mean to say you’re going to stop that?”
“Who’s stopping your allowance? Trimmer! Trimmer!” he cried.
Something in his manner—a look—a guilty terror in his eyes, made itself apparent to the woman. The reference to her mother frightened him. She saw behind the veil—but indistinctly. 247
It had always been a sore point that her father conceded only an allowance of a few thousands a year, whereas her mother had brought him an income of many thousands. Mrs. Herresford had always given her daughter to understand that wealth would revert to her, but, as the girl was too young to understand money matters at the time of her mother’s death, she had been entirely at the mercy of her father.
In her present despair, she was ready to seize any floating straw. The idea came to her that she might have some unexpected reversionary interest in her mother’s money, on which she could raise something.
Trimmer put an end to the interview by answering his master’s call. The miser was gesticulating and mumbling, and frantically motioning his daughter to leave the room.
“She wants to rob me!—she wants to rob me!” This was all that she understood of his raving.