curious sensation of mingled pleasure and pain, not unlike that she once
experienced at a Spanish bull-fight when she saw a man tossed, was yet
extremely awkward to deal with and rather alarming.



Now, too, the old question had come up again, and what was to be done?
She had sheered him off the question that afternoon, but he would want
to marry her, she felt sure of that. If she consented, what were they to
live on? Her own juncture, in the event of her re-marriage, would be cut
down to a thousand a year--she had four now, and was pinched on that;
and as for Bottles, she knew what he had--eight hundred, for Sir Eustace
had told her. He was next heir to the baronetcy, it was true, but Sir
Eustace looked as though he would live for ever, and besides, he might
marry after all.

For a few minutes Lady Croston contemplated the possibility of existing
on eighteen hundred a year, and what Chancery would give her as guardian
of her children in a poky house somewhere down at Kensington. Soon she
realised that the thing was not to be done.

"Unless Sir Eustace will do something for him, it is very clear that we
cannot be married," she said to herself with a sigh. "However, I need
not tell him that just yet, or he will be rushing back to South Africa
or something."



V