“And he has left you here?”
“I suppose he thought there was nothing else to do. He says—” and she still smoothed the creased letter under her hand—“you have your own money to live on. The practice is worth nothing under the circumstances. I should advise you to let the house. You cannot afford to live in it on two hundred pounds a year.”
“Is that all you have?”
“My father left it me.”
“Wise father!”
“I never thought, Madge, I should value two hundred pounds so much.”
Mignon, who still possessed some of the kittenish spirit of her youth, rolled over in Betty’s lap, and began to clutch at the letter with her paws. There was something pathetic in the way the wife suffered that scrap of paper to be a plaything for her pet.
“Then he says nothing, dear—?”
“Nothing?”
“About your joining him?”