"You think it funny I should be living in Peter's flat, waited on by Peter's servants—but what else could I do?"
Jan smiled in the darkness. She saw where her niece had got "what nelse?"
"Isn't it just a little—unusual?" she asked gently. "Is there no money at all, Fay? What has become of all your own?"
"It's not all gone," Fay said eagerly. "I think there's nearly two thousand pounds left, but Peter made me write home—that was at Dariawarpur, before he came down here—and say no more was to be sent out, not even if I wrote myself to ask for it—and he wrote to Mr. Davidson too——"
"I know somebody wrote. Mr. Davidson was very worried ... but what can Hugo have done with eight thousand pounds in two years? Besides his pay...."
"Eight thousand pounds doesn't go far when you've dealings with money-lenders and mines in Peru—but I don't understand it—don't ask me. I believe he left me a little money—I don't know how much—at a bank in Elphinstone Circle—but I haven't liked to write and find out, lest it should be very little ... or none...."
"Mercy!" exclaimed Jan. "It surely would be better to know for certain."
"When you've lived in the twilight country as long as I have you'll not want to know anything for certain. It's only when things are wrapped up in a merciful haze of obscurity that life is tolerable at all. Do you suppose I wanted to find out that my husband was a rascal? I shut my eyes to it as long as I could, and then Truth came with all her cruel tools and pried them open. Oh, Jan, it did hurt so!"
If Fay had cried, if her voice had even broken or she had seemed deeply moved, it would have been more bearable. It was the poor thing's calm—almost indifference—that frightened Jan. For it proved that her perceptions were numbed.
Fay had been tortured till she could feel nothing acutely any more. Jan had the feeling that in some dreadful, inscrutable way her sister was shut away from her in some prison-house of the mind.