“When do you expect him home?”
“I do not know. He did not tell me when he went; except that he should be home soon. Will you not sit down, papa?”
“No. When I brought that money here the other night, the nine thousand and forty-five pounds,” he continued, touching her arm to command her full attention, “could you not have opened your lips to tell me that it would be safer in my own house than in this?”
Maria was seized with inward trembling. She could not bear to be spoken to in that stern tone by her father. “Papa, I could not tell you. I did not know it.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you knew nothing—nothing—of the state of your husband’s affairs? of the ruin that was impending?”
“I knew nothing,” she answered. “Until the Bank closed on Saturday, I was in total ignorance that anything was wrong. I never had the remotest suspicion of it.”
“Then, I think, Maria, you ought to have had it. Rumour says that you owe a great deal of money in the town for your personal necessities, housekeeping and the like.”
“There is a good deal owing, I fear,” she answered. “George has not given me money to pay regularly of late, as he used to do.”
“And did that not serve to open your eyes?”
“No,” she faintly said. “I never gave a thought to anything being wrong.”