There was something in the tone of the last words that alarmed Clarissa.
"You—you—are not in debt, are you, Austin?" she asked timidly.
"No—no—I'm not in debt; but I owe a good deal of money."
Clarissa looked puzzled.
"That is to say, I have no vulgar debts—butcher and baker, and so on; but there are two or three things, involving some hundreds, which I shall have to settle some of these days or else——"
"Or else what, Austin?"
"Cut Paris, Clary, that's all."
Clarissa turned pale. Austin began to whistle a popular café-chantant air, as he bent over his palette, squeezing little dabs of Naples yellow out of a leaden tube. Some hundreds!—that was a vague phrase, which might mean a great deal of money; it was a phrase which alarmed Clarissa; but she was much more alarmed by the recklessness of her brother's tone.
"But if you owe money, you must pay it, Austin," she said; "you can't leave a place owing money."
The painter shrugged his shoulders.