‘Mortgage one estate—your own—to set free your husband’s! Was there ever anything so preposterous?’
‘I take a warm interest in one estate, and no interest in the other,’ answered Beatrix. ‘What is the good of property if one cannot do what one likes with it?’
‘My dear Miss Harefield, that is the spendthrift’s argument.’
‘I am no spendthrift, but I want to gratify myself in this one matter. Now, dear Mr. Scratchell, pray be agreeable. Go up to London this afternoon—see Sir Kenrick’s bankers—sell out the stocks and shares and things—raise the twenty thousand on the Lincolnshire land—and get everything done by this day week.’
‘Impossible, my dear young lady.’
‘Nothing is impossible to a clever family solicitor; you can do the preliminary act by deposit of my deeds. Remember, Mr. Scratchell, if you accomplish this thing for me, I shall always consider myself deeply bound to you. It is a favour I shall never forget.’
‘I don’t think I shall be serving you well in this business.’
‘You will be doing what I wish. I’ll run and put on my bonnet, and we’ll go at once to Mr. Dulcimer to get his consent. You must catch the two o’clock train from Great Yafford. My carriage can drive you over.’
Beatrix rang and ordered the carriage to be got ready immediately, and to follow them on to the Vicarage. Her impetuosity bewildered Mr. Scratchell. She ran out of the room, and reappeared in a minute or so in her bonnet and fur jacket. He felt himself revolving in a whirlpool. To leave his home at half an hour’s notice, and go tearing off to London! He was rather pleased at the idea of a visit to London at a client’s expense. Travelling, hotel charges, everything would be paid for him on the highest level. He had not seen the metropolis for ten years. It would be an outing such as he had never had in his life before. He began to hope that Mr. Dulcimer would consent to his ward’s wild scheme.
They found the Vicar in his beloved library, surrounded with bulky folios, his feet on the fender, and his mind a thousand miles away, with the primitive Aryan races. He was tracing the footsteps of a nomadic Indian tribe from fertile valleys eastward of the Caspian, through Persia and Asia Minor, to the shores of the Hellespont, where they were to crop up by and by as the Heraclidæ.