“It must, indeed it must, my dear sir. Oh, pay everybody at once—directly.”
“No, not directly, at all events,” said Mr. Collingwood—“certainly not directly: the law allows a year.”
“But if the money is ready,” said Helen, “I cannot understand why the debt should not be paid at once. Is there any law against paying people immediately?”
Mr. Collingwood half smiled, and on the strength of that half smile Helen concluded that he wholly yielded. “Yes, do,” cried she, “send this money this instant to Mr. James, the solicitor: he knows all about it, you say, and he will see everybody paid.”
“Stay, my dear Miss Stanley,” said the vicar, “I cannot consent to this, and you should be thankful that I am steady. If I were at this minute to consent, and to do what you desire—pay away your whole fortune, you would repent, and reproach me with my folly before the end of the year—before six months were over.”
“Never, never,” said Helen.
Mrs. Collingwood strongly took her husband’s side of the question. Helen could have no idea, she said, how necessary money would be to her. It was quite absurd to think of living upon air; could Miss Stanley think she was to go on in this world without money?
Helen said she was not so absurd; she reminded Mrs. Collingwood that she should still have what had been her mother’s fortune. Before Helen had well got out the words, Mrs. Collingwood replied,
“That will never do, you will never be able to live upon that; the interest of Lady Anne Stanley’s fortune, I know what it was, would just do for pocket-money for you in the style of life for which you have been educated. Some of your uncle’s great friends will of course invite you presently, and then you will find what is requisite with that set of people.”
“Some of my uncle’s friends perhaps will,” said Helen; “but I am not obliged to go to great or fine people, and if I cannot afford it I will not, for I can live independently on what I have, be it ever so little.”