"The sooner Violet is married," she said, "the sooner we can reduce some of the expenses; we are living beyond our income now—not a great deal, perhaps, still a bit; Violet's going would save enough, I believe; we could catch up then. That is one reason, but the chief is that a long engagement is expensive; you see, we should have to have meals different, and fires different, and all manner of extras if Mr. Frazer came in and out constantly. We should have to live altogether in a more expensive style; we might manage it for three months, or six if we were driven to it, but for a year—it is out of the question."
"But," Mr. Gillat protested, "if they can't afford it? You said he could not; he is a curate."
"He must get a living, or a chaplaincy, or something; or rather, I expect we must get it for him. Oh, no, we have no Church influence, and we don't know any bishops; but one can always rake up influence, and get to know people, if one is not too particular how."
Mr. Gillat looked at her uneasily; every now and then there flitted through his mind a suspicion that Julia was clever too, as clever perhaps as her mother, and though not, like her, a moral and social pillar standing in the high first estate from which he and the Captain had fallen. Julia had never been that, never aspired to it; she was no success at all; content to come and sit in the dining-room with him and Bouquet; she could not really be clever, or else she would have achieved something for herself, and scorned to consort with failures. He smiled benignly as he remembered this, observing, "I dare say something will be done—I hope it may; your mother's a wonderful woman, a wonderful—"
He broke off to listen; Julia listened too, then she rose to her feet. "That's father," she said, and went to let him in.
Mr. Gillat followed her to the door. "Ah—h'm," he said, as he saw the Captain coming in slowly, with a face of despairing melancholy and a drooping step.
"Come down-stairs, father," Julia said. "Come along, Johnny."
They followed her meekly to the basement, where there was a gloomy little room behind the kitchen reserved for the Captain's special use. A paraffin stove stood in the fire-place also, own brother to the one in the dining-room; Julia stooped to light it, while her father sank into a chair.
"Gillat," he said in a voice of hopelessness, "I am a ruined man."
"No?" Mr. Gillat answered sympathetically, but without surprise. "Dear me!" He carefully put down the hat and stick he had brought with him, the one on the edge of the table, the other against it, both so badly balanced that they fell to the ground.