“I don't know,” said she, waking herself from a reverie in which, against the dark background of the empty arches she had left, she still saw the white, wicked face that had leaned over her, and heard the low murmured stream of insult and menace. “I'm not sure that I shall not be worse anywhere else. I don't feel energy to make a change. I can't bear the idea of meeting people. By-and-by, in a little time, it will be different. For the present, quiet is what I like best. But you, Dick, are not looking well, you seem so over-worked and anxious. You really do want a little holiday. Why don't you go to Scotland to shoot, or take a few weeks' yachting? All your business must be pretty well settled now.”
“It will never be settled,” he said, a little sourly. “I assure you there never was property in such a mess—I mean leases and everything. Such drudgery, you have no idea; and I owe a good deal. It has not done me any good. I'd rather be as I was before that miserable Derby. I'd gladly exchange it all for a clear annuity of a thousand a year.”
“Oh! my dear Dick, you can't mean that! All the northern property, and this, and Morley?”
“I hate to talk about it. I'm tired of it already. I have been so unlucky, so foolish, and if I had not found a very good friend, I should have been utterly ruined by that cursed race; and he has been aiding me very generously, on rather easy terms, in some difficulties that have followed; and you know I had to raise money on the estate before all this happened, and have had to make a very heavy mortgage, and I am getting into such a mess—a confusion, I mean—and really I should have sold the estates, if it had not been for my unknown friend, for I don't know his name.”
“What friend?”
“The friend who has aided me through my troubles—the best friend I ever met, unless it be as I half suspect. Has anyone spoken to you lately, in a way to lead you to suppose that he, or anyone else among our friends, has been lending me a helping hand?”
“Yes, as we were driving into town to-day, Uncle David told me so distinctly; but I am not sure that I ought to have mentioned it. I fancy, indeed,” she added, as she remembered the reflection with which it was accompanied, “that he meant it as a secret, so you must not get me into disgrace with him by appearing to know more than he has told you himself.”
“No, certainly,” said Richard; “and he said it was he who lent it?”
“Yes, distinctly.”
“Well, I all but knew it before. Of course it is very kind of him. But then, you know he is very wealthy; he does not feel it; and he would not for the world that our house should lose its position. I think he would rather sell the coat off his back, than that our name should be slurred.”