“I think,” went on Barnabas, “that if this money loss had not intervened they would have followed the example of Aurora and Alan.”
“She cared for him then?” asked Miss Mason.
“I have never seen two people more in love with each other,” said Barnabas. “They evidently did not wish, at the moment, to make the fact public. But seeing them together, as I occasionally did, one must have been blind not to have realized it.”
“Ah,” said Miss Mason. “Then she is unhappy, too?”
“I have happened to meet her twice,” said Barnabas. “She acts very well. But the spring of life has gone.”
“But she has money,” said Miss Mason. “Surely——”
“If she marries again she loses every penny,” said Barnabas. “I learned that quite by chance one day from Charlton.”
Miss Mason made a curious sound with her tongue. It can only be described as clucking.
“The world,” she said, “can be curiously contrary at times. I’m very glad I asked you.”
Then she went back to her studio and sat down for a long time in her big arm-chair to think.