But this incorrigible spinster went on with her bad practices, buying this and that queer thing, and once, to the astonishment and annoyance of Mr. Burnett, securing a little profit. That made her worse than ever, and she soon went right down all among the pitfalls.
“Now what do you intend?” said the stockbroker, speaking very gravely of the catastrophe. “Are you going on, or are you going to stop?”
“I scarcely know how to answer,” said Emmie, after a silence. “I have dropped so much that it almost seems as if I couldn’t afford to stop.”
Mr. Burnett writhed despairingly. Then nodding his head, and pointed his finger at her, he said, “Miss Verinder, may I tell you a story?”
“Oh, please do,” said Emmie. “I should be so glad if you would.”
“A client of ours was bitten with this mania—for mania it is; although, mind you, there was more excuse for her, because it was in peace-time, and not when the whole world has gone upside down and from day to day one cannot make the wildest guess as to what the value of anything will be to-morrow. She was not only a client but a relative—my own cousin—Adela Burnett—so I knew all her circumstances. She too was an old—Suffice it to say that she was the unmarried daughter of my uncle John, who had left her quite a good little property. Really a jolly little place in Sussex—perhaps three hundred acres, not more—and I don’t know how many feet above the sea—The Mount, they called it—not that the name matters. But there she was—don’t you see?—surrounded with comfort—quite able to play the lady bountiful in a small way—respected by everybody. The first doubtful order she brought to me—the very first, Miss Verinder”—and he shook his finger impressively—“I said, ‘Adela, stop it.’ But did she listen to me? No. It was nothing to her that my firm is one of the oldest in the City of London and that her own cousin is its senior partner. She would sooner act on the advice of the local doctor, or the curate, or the wife of the master of hounds, than listen to anything our firm could tell her. Well, I warned her for the second time. And what do you think she did? What, Miss Verinder, do you think she did?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Miss Verinder, feebly.
“She removed her business to another firm.”
“Oh, what a shame!” said Emmie, with sympathetic indignation. “Oh, I think that was mean of her. I promise never to do anything like that.”
Mr. Burnett writhed again. It seemed that Miss Verinder was missing the whole point of the story. As he hastened to explain, it was not the loss of his commission but the ruin of his cousin that he deplored.