"You had better lend the money to your cousin," suggested Nellie.
"I'd let it perish first," cried George. "Whatever made you think of such a thing?"
"Mr. Taverner wrote to Miss Sophy this morning—she shows me all her letters now—and asked her to lend him two hundred pounds, as he had suddenly discovered another mortgage he had forgotten to pay off."
"The fellow's a ruffian!" exclaimed George, not without some admiration for Percy's methods of finance, which compared favourably with his own.
"He had learnt the profession of begging, and isn't ashamed to practise it. I think he might wait until Miss Sophy is dead."
"Percy has no moral sense," said George, with the utmost severity. "He has visited here, and I have entertained him; but he has never given me anything except superciliousness, and on one occasion a cigar which was useless except as a germicide. I have never yet heard your opinion of him."
"He's a name and nothing else," she said.
"I did have an idea he wanted to be something to you."
"What rubbish! He never even looked at me properly. When he didn't gaze at my boots he stared over my head; and he spoke to me like a gramophone."
"You didn't exactly like him?" George suggested.