y pounds--ten shillings a week for a year--and she had
barely kissed him. And now, instantly after that amazing and mad
generosity, she had the face to look cross because he would not buy
Wilbraham Hall! It was inconceivable; it was unutterable. So he said
nothing.

"Why shouldn't you, after all?" she resumed. "You've got an income of
nearly five thousand a year." (Now he hated her for the mean manner in
which she had wormed out of him secrets that previously he had shared
with no one.) "You don't spend the twentieth part of it. What are you
going to do with it? _What are you going to do with it_? You're getting
an old man." (Cold horrors!) "You can't take it with you when you leave
the Five Towns, you know. Whom shall you leave your money to? You'll
probably die worth a hundred thousand pounds, at this rate. You'll leave
it to me, of course. Because there's nobody else for you to leave it to.
Why can't you use it now, instead of wasting it in old stockings?"

"I bank my money, wench," he hissingly put in.

"Old stockings!" she repeated, loudly. "We could live splendidly at
Wilbraham Hall on two thousand a year, and you would still be saving
nearly three thousand a year."

He said nothing.

"Do you suppose I gave up my position at school in order to live in a
poky little hole at eighteen pounds a year? What do you think I can do
with myself all day in Trafalgar-road? Why, nothing. There's no room
even for a piano, and so my fingers are stiffening every day. It's not
life at all. Naturally, it's a great privilege," she pursued, with a
vicious inflection that reminded him perfectly of Susan, "for a girl
like me to live with an old man like you, all alone, with one servant
and no sitting-room. But some privileges cost too dear. The fact is, you
never think of me at all." (And he had but just given her six-and-twenty
pounds.) "You think you've got a cheap housekeeper in me--but you
haven't. I'm a very good housekeeper--especially in a very large
house--but I'm not cheap."

She spoke as if she had all her life been accustomed to living in vast
mansions. But James knew that, despite her fine friends, she had never
lived in anything appreciably larger than his own dwelling. He knew
there was not a house in Sneyd-road, Longshaw, worth more than
twenty-five pounds a year. The whole outbreak was shocking and
disgraceful. He scarcely recognised her.

He said nothing. And then suddenly he said: "I shall buy no Wilbraham
Ha