"Nothing," cried Vera's aunt, with uplifted hands. "Was there ever anyone so feather-headed, so feckless? Can you forget that when your wife dies her fortune dies with her?"
"No. But when she dies, I shall have done with all that money can buy. I shall be able to pension the old stable hands, and provide for my dogs, out of my fifteen hundred a year; and I can give my trainer half a dozen cracks that will make him comfortable for life."
"You are very considerate about your stable and kennels. I wonder if you have ever considered Vera's obligations to those who come after her."
"If you mean the Roman cater-cousins I certainly have not."
"Provana's heirs? Why, of course not! They will be inordinately rich when that splendid fortune is chopped up among them. No, Claude, if you had a proper family feeling, which to my mind is an essential element in the Christian life, you would have thought of our herd of poor relations. Nicholas Disbrowe, dying by inches in an East Anglian Vicarage, and not daring to winter in the South, for want of means; or poor Lady Rosalba, who is no better off than Vera's grandmother, and doesn't make half as good a fight as poor Lady Felicia did; or Mary Disbrowe Jones, who married so wretchedly, and is selling blouses in a shabby street in Pimlico——"
"I think Vera has done a lot for all of 'em. I know she sent the Reverend Nicholas a thousand pounds last winter, when his wife wrote her a doleful letter; and she gave her blouse-making cousin two hundred and fifty pounds last week, to save her from bankruptcy. Consider them, forsooth! Do you suppose they don't ask to be considered? Every man jack of them, down to the remotest connection by marriage. They are as eloquent with the pen as professional begging-letter writers. They blister their papers with tears. And Vera never refuses. She does not know how."
"Oh, I know she is generous. A thousand to that worthy man in the Fens was handsome; but that kind of casual help won't provide for the future; and when our poor dear is gone there will be nothing. May that sad day be long, long off; but in the meantime she ought to invest her surplus income, and leave it to those who want it most and would use it best. You may be sure I have no personal feeling; but the best of us are not too well off, and if there should come the general election that we are threatened with, I doubt if Chagford will be able to stand for North Devon. The ballot has made bribery more audacious and more expensive than ever. I am told three half crowns is the least the wretches will take. They will ride a candidate's motor to death, and then go and vote for his opponent."
"Let Chagford talk to my wife, if there's a dissolution," said Claude, with a half-smothered yawn that expressed weariness and disgust.
"Vera is always kind," sighed Lady Okehampton dolefully; but she refrained from suggesting that, when the dissolution came, Vera might not be there.
This was Aunt Mildred's last attack upon Claude Rutherford. He took matters into his own hands after this, and no longer depended upon accounts of his wife's health at second hand. He took all information upon that subject from Dr. Selwyn Tower, who had a great reputation at that period, and whom he was inclined to trust.