"Sir Charles is still silent on the subject, I presume?"
"As silent as a boiled periwinkle by all accounts. The servants say they haven't heard him mention the Captain's name since he came back."
"Perhaps they have quarrelled."
"Well, my belief is that if the Captain failed to carry off the girl as his bride, Sir Charles would be terrible angry."
"Then you have a theory after all, Mrs. Tuke?"
"Well, no, I don't know that I has. I only puts two and two together, as it were."
"But why should Sir Charles be so anxious that his son should marry this particular young lady? There would seem to be any number of eligible spinsters in the country."
"But millionairesses ain't to be picked up every day, and I reckon the Captain ain't anything of his own to live upon, except what his father allows him; and Sir Charles, they say, is as poor as a church mouse; but that's all nonsense. I should like to have a quarter of what he's got to live on."
"But you haven't his expenses, Mrs. Tuke."
"And he needn't have 'em unless he liked. Think of their wintering abroad; it must have cost 'em a heap of money."