“Because I’ve nothing to say, sir.”
“That’s right, that’s right. Now that you’ve left 68 off ‘speaking your mind,’ as you used to call it, you’re becoming quite docile and useful. Perhaps, I’ll give Ripon another fifty dollars a year. I’m not a hard man, you know, when people understand that I stand no nonsense. But I always have my own way. No one can get over me. You and I understand each other, Mrs. Ripon, eh? Yet, I doubt if you’d have remained so long, if Ripon hadn’t married you. He’s made a sensible woman of you. Tell him I’m going to give him an extra fifty dollars a year, but—but he must do with a hand less in the gardens.”
“What, another?”
“Yes. It’ll pay, won’t it, to get fifty dollars a year more, and save me two hundred on the outdoor staff, eh?”
The woman made no answer, but crossed the room softly, and closed the door. When she was on the other side of it, she shook her fist at him.
“You old wretch! If I had my way, I’d smother you. You spoil your own life, and you’re spoiling my man. He won’t be fit to live with soon.”
The sunlight streamed into the bedroom, and Herresford, drawing the curtains of his ebony bedstead, lay blinking in their shadow, looking out over his garden, and noting every beauty with the keen pleasure of an ardent lover of horticulture—his only hobby. As advancing age laid its finger more 69 heavily upon him, he had become increasingly irritable and impossible. Every human instinct seemed to have shriveled up and died—all save the love of money and his passion for flowers. His withered old lips almost smiled as he moved the field-glasses slowly, bringing into range the magnificent stretch of soft turf, with its patchwork of vivid color.
The face of the old man on the bed changed as he clutched the field-glasses and brought them in nervous haste to his eyes, and a muttered oath escaped him. A woman had come through one of the archways in the hedge that surrounded the herb garden. She walked slowly, every now and then breaking off a flower. As she tugged at a trail of late roses, sending their petals in a crimson stream upon the turf, Herresford dragged himself higher upon the pillows, his lips working in anger, and his fingers clawing irritably at the coverlet.
“Leave them alone, leave them alone!” he cried. “How dare she touch my flowers! I’ll have her shut out of the place, daughter or no daughter. What does she want here? Begging again, I suppose. The only bond between us—money. And she sha’n’t have any. I’ll be firm about it.”
He was still muttering when Mrs. Swinton came into the room, bringing with her the sheaf of blossoms she had gathered as she came along.