Captain Fennel glared at his wife for a moment, then smoothed his face to its ordinary placidity, and turned to Lavinia.
“Will you be good enough to hand over to me my wife’s money, Miss Preen?”
“No,” she answered quietly.
“I must trouble you to do so, when breakfast shall be finished.”
“I cannot,” pursued Lavinia. “I have paid it away.”
“That I do not believe. I claim it from you in right of my wife; and I shall enforce the claim.”
“The money is Nancy’s, not yours,” said Lavinia. “In consequence of your having stopped her share last quarter in London, I was plunged here into debt and great inconvenience. Yesterday morning I went out to settle the debts—and it has taken the whole of her money to do it. That is the state of things, Captain Fennel.”
“I am in debt here myself,” retorted he, but not angrily. “I owe money to my tailor and bootmaker; I owe an account at the chemist’s; I want money in my pockets—and I must indeed have it.”
“Not from me,” returned Lavinia.