Sir Edward took his wife in-doors, solemnly leading her by the hand, and when they got to the book-room he put a chair for her solemnly. Already his old breeding—too fine for the uses of every day at the Hook—began to come back to him.
“I have not been successful,” he said, “It will not do.”
“It will not do? She won’t take it from you, Edward?”
“There is no reason why she shouldn’t take it from me; but she will not hear of it. I have done all I could, my dear. There is nothing more possible. We can go in when we like; they will put no obstacles in our way.”
“Go in when we like—and how are we to furnish Penton?” she cried.
“And keep it up,” he said, with a groan; “there are literally acres of glass—and to see the gardeners going away in the evening it is like a factory. But we can not help it. I have done my best. By the bye,” he added, in something of his old aggrieved tone, “they have behaved what I suppose will be called very handsomely in another way. I told you my uncle’s fancy about Walter—they have given him ten thousand pounds.”
“What?” she said, almost with a scream.
“Walter—he took my uncle’s fancy; didn’t I tell you? He is to have ten thousand pounds. It’s a good sum, but nothing to them; they are very rich; what with all the savings of the estate, and the money in the funds, and the lands elsewhere that are out of the entail, Alicia’s very rich. They can afford it; but all the same, it’s a nice sum.”
“Ten thousand pounds,” she repeated to herself. She had not remarked the rest. A sort of consternation of pleasure overwhelmed her. “It is very good of them, Edward, oh, very good. Why, Walter will be independent. Ten thousand pounds! Oh, dear me, what a good that would have done us—how much we should have thought of it! Ten thousand pounds! And what does he say?”
“Nothing, so far as I remarked. I was not thinking of him,” said Sir Edward, with a little impatience. He had so much to think of in respect to the family at large and all the cares of the new life, that he was a little annoyed to have Walter thrust into the front at such a moment. “Of course it is a great thing for him,” he said. “It would have been a great thing for us at this moment to have command of a sum of money. My uncle might have thought of that. He might have thought that to change our style of living as we shall be obliged to do, to set up an establishment on a totally different scale, to alter everything, a little ready money would have been a great help; whereas Walter has no use for it, no need of it, a boy of twenty. But there is no limit to the fantastic notions of old men with money to leave.”