'Is it a legacy?—or an inheritance?—how did you get it?'
'It is not exactly a legacy: it is a kind of restoration to an unknown person: a gift not made to me personally, but to me unknown.'
'You talk to me in riddles, Alec.'
'I would talk in blank verse if I could. It is, indeed, literally true. I have received an—estate—in portable property worth nearly forty thousand pounds.'
'Oh! Then we shall be really rich, and not have to pretend quite so much? A little pretence, Alec, I like. It makes me feel like returning to society: too much pretence reminds one of the policeman.'
'Don't you want to know how I have come into this money?'
'I am not curious, Alec. I like everything to be done for me. When I was a girl there were carriages and horses and everything that I wanted—all ready—all done for me, you know. Then I was stripped of all. I had nothing to do or to say in the matter. It was done for me. Now, you tell me you have got eighty thousand pounds. Oh! Heavens! It is done for me. The ways of fate are so wonderful. Things are given and things are taken away. Why should I inquire how things come? Perhaps this will be taken away in its turn.'
'Not quite, Zoe. I have got my hand over it. You can trust your husband, I think, to keep what he has got.' Indeed, he looked at this moment cunning enough to be trusted with keeping the National Debt itself.
'Eighty thousand pounds!' she said. 'Let me write it down. Eighty thousand pounds! Eight and one, two, three, four oughts.' She wrote them down, and clasped her hands, saying, 'Oh! the beauty—the incomparable beauty—of the last ought!'
'Perhaps not quite so much,' said her husband, thinking that the exaggeration was a little too much.