'He will want money even to do that,' I remarked.

She murmured, 'Is there not some annual income paid to him?'

Her quick delicacy made her redden in alluding so closely to his personal
affairs, and I loved her for the nice feeling. 'It was not much,' I
said. The miserable attempt to repair the wrongs done to him with this
small annuity angered me--and I remembered, little pleased, the foolish
expectations he founded on this secret acknowledgement of the justice of
his claims. 'We won't talk of it,' I pursued. 'I wish he had never
touched it. I shall interdict him.'

'You would let him pay his debts with it, Harry?'

'I am not sure, aunty, that he does not incur a greater debt by accepting
it.'

'One's wish would be, that he might not ever be in need of it.'

'Ay, or never be caring to find the key of it.'

'That must be waste of time,' she said.

I meant something else, but it was useless to tell her so.




CHAPTER XLI