"But how much is—your share?" she asked, almost in a whisper.
"Rather more than eight hundred rupees."
"And you have actually—done it, Theo?"
"Yes. You surely couldn't have wished otherwise?"
For a moment she hesitated, then her repressed bitterness brimmed over.
"Oh, I don't know. Only I think you might have considered me a little first. I've more right to your money than he has; and if you can afford to throw away eight hundred rupees on a careless, extravagant subaltern, you could quite well let me go to Simla; or at least add something to my dress allowance. It's not so very easy to manage on the little you give me."
She spoke with averted face in a tone of clear hardness, and each word smote her husband like a small sharp stone.
"I am sorry you see it that way," he said, a new restraint in his voice, "and that you don't find your allowance sufficient. I give you all I can, and you seem to have pretty frocks enough, anyhow. If I had eight hundred rupees to throw away,—as you choose to express it,—I should hardly have spoken of putting ourselves out; in fact, I shouldn't have spoken at all. But you have been such good friends with the Boy all along that I hoped you would be ready to help give him a hand up. I can only manage such a sum by knocking two hundred off my pay for the next four months. This means cutting down expenses a little; but we can easily do it, Ladybird—if we pull together."
At any other time such an appeal from Theo would have proved irresistible, would have drawn them into a closer union of thought and purpose than they had ever attained as yet. But the appeal came at the wrong moment, and Evelyn Desmond sat silent, her hands so fast interlocked that her rings bruised their delicate surface.
"I am thinking of the Boy's mother as well as himself, you see," her husband urged with increasing gentleness; "he is her only son, and she is wrapped up in him; and I know from experience what that means."