He smiled. "I don't. I only know that I'm prepared, if I may say so, to pay for you."
"Oh," she said, "it isn't that."
He smiled again at her horror.
"I know it isn't that. Still——" He named a round sum, a sum so perfect in its roundness that it took her breath away. With such a sum she could do all that she wanted for her sister Effy at once, and secure herself against gross poverty for years.
"It's more than we could give Mr. Tanqueray."
"Is it?"
"Much more."
"That's what's so awful," she said.
He noticed how she clenched her hands as she said it.
"It's not my fault, is it?"