"I do think," she said, "that you're a greater fool even than poor Samuel. Is not your engagement to a nice, gentlemanly, clever man like Jasper Quentyns the one ray of brightness in this desolate day? You, child, at least are provided for."
"I wonder if you think that I care about being provided for at this juncture?" answered Hilda, knitting her brows once again in angry perplexity.
She went away to her own room, and sitting before her desk, wrote a long letter to her lover.
Quentyns had been called to the Bar, and was already beginning to receive "briefs."
His income was by no means large, however, and although he undoubtedly loved Hilda for her own sake, he might not have proposed an immediate marriage had he not believed that his pretty bride would not come to him penniless.
Hilda sat with her pen in her hand, looking down at the blank sheet of paper.
By the same post which had brought the lawyer's dreadful letter there had come two closely-written sheets from Jasper. He wanted Hilda to marry him in the autumn, and he had already begun house-hunting.
"We might find it best to take a small flat for a year," he had written, "but if you would rather have a house, darling, say so. Some people don't approve of flats. They say they are not so wholesome. One misses the air of the staircase, and there is a certain monotony in living altogether on one floor which may not be quite conducive to health. On the other hand flats are compact, and one knows almost at a glance what one's expenses are likely to be. I have been consulting Rivers—you know how often I have talked to you of my friend Archie Rivers—and he thinks on the whole that a flat would be advisable; we avoid rates and taxes and all those sort of worries, and if we like to shut up house for a week, and run down to the Rectory, why there we are, you know; for the house-porter sees to our rooms, and we run no risk from burglars. But what do you say yourself, darling, for that is the main point?"
Hilda had read this letter with a beating heart and a certain pleasant sense of exhilaration at breakfast that morning, but then this was before the blow came—before Aunt Marjorie's shriek had sounded through the room, and before Hilda had caught a glimpse of her father's face with the gray tint spreading all over it, before she had heard his tremulous words:
"Yes, Marjorie! God help us! We are ruined."