“Do you know, Leroy,” she observed, as they left the table and sauntered back into the pale blue drawing-room, “do you know that the servants haven't been paid for three months?”
“Oh, for Heaven's sake,” he expostulated, “don't begin that sort of thing! I get enough of that at home; I get it every time I show my nose!”
“I only mentioned it,” she said carelessly.
“I heard you all right. It isn't any pleasanter for me than for you. In fact, I'm sick of it; I'm dead tired of being up against it every day of my life. When a man has anything somebody gets it before he can sidestep. When a man's dead broke there's nobody in sight to touch.”
“You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back.”
“Didn't I tell you I missed him?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Of course. You are going to do something, I suppose.”
They had reached the gold and green room above. Lydia began pacing the length of a beautiful Kermanshah rug—a pale, delicate marvel of rose and green on a ground of ivory—lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet.