Grace was lying back in a chair, looking pale and weary, and her husband was writing.
All at once he looked up and said briefly—
"Grace, that money must be given up."
"Yes," she said, and he thought he heard a little sob.
"How you can care to keep it!" he said, trying to subdue his feelings because she was evidently so unwell.
"I care to keep it! If you only knew how I hate myself for ever having cared! Paul, do you remember your being so violent—speaking so strongly about it. It took away my courage. I could not tell you, and it has been making me so wretched!"
"But why was I kept in the dark about it from the first?" he asked, always trying to control himself. "Why was it talked of as a legacy?"
"There was no reason you should not have known at first. I described it to your mother as a legacy (it was, in the first instance, left to Margaret); it saved explanations, and I did not care for her to know. You never inquired how the money had come to me. If you had asked one direct question, I should have been forced to speak the truth to you."
"I see no difference," he said again.
He was most terribly annoyed; the whole thing was a shock to him, and he was all the more annoyed because he was conscious that the increase to his income had been pleasant, and that it had helped to smooth their path so much.