No doubt the L3000 would be given; but that, as far
as she could understand her father's words, was to be the whole of
her fortune. She had never known anything of her father's affairs or
of his intentions, but she had certainly supposed that her fortune
would be very much more than this. She had learned in some indirect
way that a large sum of money would have gone with her hand to
Arthur Fletcher, could she have brought herself to marry that
suitor favoured by her family. And now, having learned, as she had
learned, that money was of vital importance to her husband, she was
dismayed at what seemed to her to be parental parsimony. But he was
overjoyed,--so much so that for a while he lost that restraint over
himself which was habitual to him. He ate his breakfast in a state of
exultation, and talked,--not alluding specially to this L3000,--as
though he had the command of almost unlimited means. He ordered a
carriage and drove her out, and bought presents for her,--things
as to which they had both before decided that they should not be
bought because of the expense. "Pray don't spend your money for me,"
she said to him. "It is nice to have you giving me things, but it
would be nicer to me even than that to think that I could save you
expense."

But he was not in a mood to be denied. "You don't understand," he
said. "I don't want to be saved from little extravagances of this
sort. Owing to circumstances, your father's money was at this moment
of importance to me;--but he has answered to the whip and the money
is there, and that trouble is over. We can enjoy ourselves now. Other
troubles will spring up, no doubt, before long."

She did not quite like being told that her father had "answered to
the whip,"--but she was willing to believe that it was a phrase
common among men to which it would be prudish to make objection.
There was, also, something in her husband's elation which was
distasteful to her. Could it be that reverses of fortune with
reference to moderate sums of money, such as this which was now
coming into his hands, would always affect him in the same way? Was
it not almost unmanly, or at any rate was it not undignified? And yet
she tried to make the best of it, and lent herself to his holiday
mood as well as she was able. "Shall I write and thank papa?" she
said that evening.

"I have been thinking of that," he said. "You can write if you like,
and of course you will. But I also will write, and had better