“I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said gravely.
“You mean—?”
“About your buying the old Bolton place and paying such a preposterous price for it, and all the rest, including the minister’s back-pay.”
She remained silent, playing with the ribbon of her sash.
“I have a sort of inward conviction that you’re not doing it because you think Brookville is such a pleasant place to live in,” he went on, keenly observant of the sudden color fluttering in her cheeks, revealed by the light of Mrs. Solomon Black’s parlor lamp which stood on a stand just inside the carefully screened window. “It looks,” he finished, “as if you—well; it may be a queer thing for me to say; but I’ll tell you frankly that when mother showed me the check she got today I felt that it was—charity.”
She shook her head.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “You are quite, quite in the wrong.”
“But you can’t make me believe that with all your money—pardon me for mentioning what everybody in the village is talking about— You’ll have to convince me that the old Bolton place has oil under it, or coal or diamonds, before I—”
“Why should you need to be convinced of anything so unlikely?” she asked, with gentle coldness.
He reddened angrily.