After this, Captain Oliphant soothed himself down with a cigarette, and spent a little time in admiring contemplation of an excellent portrait of Mrs Ingleton on the wall. Finally, he went cheerfully to bed.
Chapter Six.
A Case of Eviction.
A week passed and Mr Armstrong did not return. By the end of that time Miss Rosalind Oliphant, for better or worse, had settled down into her new quarters, and made herself as much at home as a fair Bohemian can do anywhere. She still resented the fate which brought her to Maxfield at all, and annoyed her father constantly by casting their dependence on the hospitality of the place in his teeth.
“I wish you had some business, father,” said she, “so that we could pay our way. I don’t suppose my pictures will ever sell, but every penny I earn shall go to Roger. Couldn’t we go and live in the lodge, somewhere where we can—”
“Rosalind,” said her father, “you vex me by talking like a child. After the education I have tried to provide for you, I had a right to hope you would at least regulate your tongue by a little common-sense. Do you not know that I have given up my profession, everything, in order to come to do my duty here?”
“I wish you hadn’t,” said the girl doggedly; “it would have been so easy to decline the trust and remain independent. It’s awful to think we’ve nothing to live on but what we get out of Roger’s money.”
“Foolish girl,” said her father with a forced laugh, “you are a delightful specimen of a woman’s incapacity to understand the very rudiments of business. Why, you absurd child, old Roger Ingleton’s will bequeathed me £300 a year for acting as the boy’s guardian.”