‘Is it too much to ask for a ray of your sunshine—a little benefit from your large wealth?’
‘I will do anything in reason,’ answered Laura, ‘but not even for my own father—had you been all that a father should be to his child—would I suffer Jasper Treverton’s wealth to be turned to evil uses. You told me that you stood alone in the world, with no one dependent on you. Surely six hundred a year is an income that should enable you to live in comfort and respectability?’
‘It will, when I have got myself clear of past liabilities. Remember that until six months ago the help you gave me amounted only to a hundred a year, except when I appealed to you, under the pressure of circumstances, for an extra trifle. A hundred a year in London, to a man in bad health, hardly served to keep the wolf from the door. I had debts to pay. I have been unfortunate in a speculation that promised well.’
‘In future you will have no occasion to speculate.’
‘True,’ said Desrolles, with a sigh, as he filled himself another glass of brandy.
Laura watched him with a face full of pain. Was this a father she could acknowledge to the husband she loved? Only with deepest shame could she confess her close kindred with a creature so sunk in degradation.
Desrolles drank the brandy at a gulp, and then flung himself into the chair by the hearth.
‘And pray how long have you been married?’ he asked.
Laura’s face crimsoned at the question. It was just the one inquiry calculated to give her acutest pain; for it recalled all that was painful in the circumstances of her marriage.
‘We were married on the last day of last year,’ she said.