Lady Okehampton did not remember; but she gave a sigh of assent that answered as well.
"I'm afraid Vera's is a rooted sorrow, and, God help me! I cannot pluck it from her memory. We had better leave her alone. We can do nothing more for her. We can't make her happy."
"Claude, this is too dreadful. Are we to let her die?" cried Aunt Mildred, with something like an elderly shriek.
"Is death so great an evil? At least it means rest, and there are some of us who can get rest no other way."
"Claude, it is positively dreadful to hear you talk like that, as if you cared for nothing in this life."
"I don't."
And then Lady Okehampton took him in hand severely, and talked to him as a good woman, but as a Philistine of the Philistines, would naturally talk on such an occasion; and after remonstrating with him for his want of religious feeling, and even proper affection, went on to reproaching him for spending his wife's money, squandering her magnificent fortune with a reckless wastefulness that might end in reducing her to beggary.
"No fear of that, Aunt Mildred. No doubt I have thrown money out of windows. Money has never been a serious consideration with Vera and me. We should have been quite as happy when we started on our Venetian honeymoon if we had had only just enough to pay for our tourists' tickets and our gondola, just enough for the gondola and a cheap hotel. Money could buy us nothing that we cared for. Later, when I knew what her income was, I spent with a free hand; but there's a good deal of spending in a hundred thousand a year——"
Lady Okehampton shivered, and stirred in her seat uneasily. That colossal income, and nothing done for the needy members of her husband's illustrious house!
"I wanted to amuse myself and to amuse my wife, and amusements are costly nowadays; so the money has run out pretty fast, but there has always been a handsome surplus. I see Mr. Zabulon, the banker, one of my wife's trustees, two or three times a year, and he has never complained. Vera's charities are immense; so there is really nothing for you to moan about, Lady Okehampton."