“Oh,” Lydia Eaton said, her hands squeezed together,—“oh, no! He is quite different from—me. It is you who are spending the—blood-money on the improvements. If he were spending it on himself, like—like me, it would be different.”
Her brother looked up at her from his footstool at his wife’s feet, first amused, and then bored.
“My dear Lily, I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m sorry if I stepped on your toes about your parson. He means well. Only he is a parson, so I suppose he can’t help being rather ladylike in business matters. Do drop the subject; I am sick of the whole thing. How is your conservatory, Nell? Are those violets the result of your agricultural efforts?”
“I think, Robert,” his sister said in her low voice, that shivered and broke, “I must just say one thing more: I must give you back this beautiful thing you gave me at dinner. And I must go away with the children.”
“What under the sun!” he began, frowning; then he got up and stood on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire. “Lydia, I hope you are not going to be a fool? What are you talking about? Sit down,—sit down! You’re as white as a ghost. Lily, I’m afraid you’re a great goose. What’s the matter?” He could not help softening as he looked at her. She stood there by the little tottering table, loaded with its dozens of foolish bits of silver, so tense and quivering that even his impatient eyes could not fail to see her agitation.
“Robert, you have been so kind to us; you are so good to us,—oh, I don’t know how I can do it!” she broke into an anguished sob,—“but I must. Mr. Eaton would never have let the children be supported on money that was not—that was not good.”
There was silence; the clock in the hall chimed ten. Then Eleanor Blair, sitting up, pale and angry, said,—
“Well, upon my word!”
Her husband looked at his sister with sudden kindness in his eyes. “Lily, you don’t understand. When I said what I did to Mr. Hudson,—of course, that has put it into your head,—I didn’t really mean it. In the first place, I’m an honest man (I’ll just mention that in passing), and it is not your business nor his to judge my business methods. It isn’t a pretty thing to look a gift-horse in the mouth, Lil.”
“It isn’t what you said to Mr. Hudson,” she answered. “I’ve been thinking about it for nearly a year. Robert, you pay them so little, and I—I have all this.”