“It’s a treachery!” she cried; “a treachery to Alban and all of us. We won’t allow it. We ought to starve rather than let the house go. All our history is there. It’s what we mean and are. Without that we’re nothing.”
“It will be a great sacrifice, my dear,” said the tenth Earl of Ottery. He, too, looked up at the old house which his forefathers had built, in which they had lived and died and played their part in English history. There was a little mist before his eyes.
“A great sacrifice!” he said in a broken way.
“I’ll talk to Mother about this!” said Joyce, savagely.
Lord Ottery smiled at her, and patted her hand.
“Yes, go and talk it out with your Mother. She’s in her room reading The Times.”
Joyce ran up the terrace steps, without waiting for Bertram, and the two men watched her slim, boyish figure disappear through the doorway of the west turret.
“Women like talking,” said Ottery. “It doesn’t alter things, though. Talking never did.”
He thrust his fingers through his red beard, and then put his hand through Bertram’s arm, leaning on him a little heavily. It was the first time he had ever done so, and Bertram thought it was a sign of weakness.
“No amount of talk will bring back England to its old state,” said Lord Ottery, gravely. “Only hard work and good will, and honest government, and wise leadership, can help towards that. The war has robbed us of our old prosperity. We’re going to be poor. We must steel ourselves to poverty.”