HAWCASTLE [sharply, with determination, yet quietly]. A hundred and
fifty thousand pounds!

MADAME DE CHAMPIGNY [excited and breathless]. My friend! Will she?

[Turns and stares toward ETHEL'S room, where the piano is still heard
softly playing.]

HAWCASTLE. Not for Almeric, but to be the future Countess of Hawcastle.
My sister-in-law hasn't been her chaperone for a year for nothing. And,
by Jove, she hasn't done it for nothing, either!

[He laughs grimly, moving back from the table.]

But she's deserved all I shall allow her.

MADAME DE CHAMPIGNY [coldly]. Why?

HAWCASTLE [rising]. It was she who found these people. Indeed, we might
say that both you and I owe her something also. [Comes around behind
table to MADAME DE CHAMPIGNY.] Even a less captious respectability than
Lady Creech's might have looked askance at the long friendship [kisses
her hand] which has existed between us. Yet she has always countenanced
us, though she must have guessed--a great many things. And she will help
us to urge an immediate marriage. You know as well as I do that unless
it is immediate, there'll be the devil to pay. Don't miss _that_
essential: something must be done at once. We're at the
breaking-point--if you like the words--a most damnable insolvency.

[Enter ALMERIC from the grove. He is a fair, fresh-colored Englishman of