The lady turned her doe-like eyes on her nephew. "My dear Tony...."
He clenched his vigorous hands to keep down his emotion.
"Yes. Cedersholm has turned his back on me, as far as I can see."
With a short laugh he threw off his intense mood, thoroughly ashamed of his weakness.
"Our branch of the family, Aunt Caroline, are unlucky all round, I reckon."
There was one thought uppermost in his aunt's mind. She had no money with which to pay her debt to him. When there weren't lamps to buy there were rugs and figures of biscuit Venuses bending over biscuit streams. She had confessed her vice; she "adored bric-à-brac." The jumble in her mind made her eyes more vague than ever.
"Will you go back South?" she wondered.
He started, spread out his empty hands. "Go back to mother like this? Auntie!"
As ineffectual as she had been on the night of his arrival, so now Mrs. Carew sat ineffectual before his crisis. She breathed, "My poor boy!" and her fingers strayed amongst the keys and found the melody of the song he loved so much.