"Do you mean," she inquired, "that my husband will not have the management of his own business. Under Mr. Swanland I mean of course," she added.
"Mr. Mortomley's health seems quite broken up," said Mr. Benning. "It would be simple cruelty to ask him to attend to business. After the meeting of creditors the best thing he can do will be to go to some pretty seaside place in Devonshire or Cornwall, and live there comfortable upon your money."
For a minute the wretched woman sat silent facing her misery. Leave Homewood! leave the business of which her husband thought so much! Perhaps it was not true, perhaps she had not understood him.
"Do you really think we had better go away, away altogether," she gasped.
"Certainly," he answered.
At that moment, that critical moment, when she was about to ask if such a proposal were possible what the meaning of liquidation could be, Mr. Swanland, pale, bland, pleasant, courteous, Mr. Asherill's perfect gentleman the accountant cat, with his claws sheathed in velvet, folded in his muff, purring complacently, re-entered the room.
"Well, Mrs. Mortomley," he said, "everything seems most satisfactory. The trade appears good and the men employed respectable. Yes, thank you; I will take a cup of tea."
This was between the lines, and when Mrs. Mortomley handed him the tea she noticed how he stirred it, not at all as Mr. Asherill's perfect gentleman should have done, but holding the spoon upright.
"It is a shame for me to be so hypercritical," she thought. "I dare say he is a far honester man than this dreadful lawyer."