'Then if your Aunt Hannah lives longest, you'll still come in for
everything, just as if your Uncle Meshach hadn't altered his will?'

'Yes. But Aunt Hannah won't live for ever. And Uncle Meshach will. And
where shall I be if she dies first?' He went on in a different tone. 'Of
course one of 'em's bound to die soon. Uncle's sixty-four if he's a day,
and the old lady's a year older. And I want money.'

'Do you, Jack, really?' she said. Long ago she had suspected it, though
John never stinted her. Once more the solid house and their comfortable
existence seemed to shiver and be engulfed.

'By the way, Nora,' he burst out with sudden bright animation, 'I've
been so occupied to-day I forgot to wish you many happy returns. And
here's the usual. I hadn't got it on me this morning.'

He kissed her and gave her a ten-pound note.

'Oh! thanks, Jack!' she said, glancing at the note with a factitious
curiosity to hide her embarrassment.

'You're good-looking enough yet!' he exclaimed as he gazed at her.

'He wants something out of me. He wants something out of me,' she
thought as she gave him a smile for his compliment. And this idea that
he wanted something, that circumstances should have forced him into the
position of an applicant, distressed her. She grieved for him. She saw
all his good qualities--his energy, vitality, cleverness, facile
kindliness, his large masculinity. It seemed to her, as she gazed up at
him from the music-stool in the shaded solitude or the drawing-room,