CHAPTER VIII.

On Half Rations.

Captain Winstanley entered upon his new position with a fixed
determination to make the best of it, and with a very clear view of its
advantages and disadvantages. For seven years he was to be master of
everything--or his wife was to be mistress, which, in his mind, was
exactly the same. No one could question his use of the entire income
arising from Squire Tempest's estates during that period. When Violet
came of age--on her twenty-fifth birthday--the estates were to be
passed over to her _in toto;_ but there was not a word in the Squire's
will as to the income arising during her minority. Nor had the Squire
made any provision in the event of his daughter's marriage. If Violet
were to marry to-morrow, she would go to her husband penniless. He
would not touch a sixpence of her fortune until she was twenty-five. If
she were to die during her minority the estate would revert to her
mother.

It was a very nice estate, taken as a sample of a country squire's
possessions. Besides the New Forest property, there were farms in
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire; the whole yielding an income of between five
and six thousand a year. With such a revenue, and the Abbey House and
all its belongings rent free, Captain Winstanley felt himself in a land
of Canaan. But then there was the edict that seven years hence he was
to go forth from this land of milk and honey; or, at any rate, was to
find himself living at the Abbey House on a sorely restricted income.
Fifteen hundred a year in such a house would mean genteel beggary, he
told himself despondently. And even this genteel beggary would be
contingent on his wife's life. Her death would rob him of everything.

He had a mind given to calculation, and he entered upon the
closest calculations as to his future. He meant to enjoy life, of
course. He had always done that to the best of his ability. But he saw
that the chief duty he owed to himself was to save money; and to lay by
against the evil inevitable day when Violet Tempest would despoil him
of power and wealth. The only way to do this was by the cutting down of
present expenses, and an immediate narrowing of the lines on which the
Abbey House was being conducted; for the Captain had discovered that
his wife, who was the most careless and incompetent of women as regards
money matters, had been spending the whole of her income since her
husband's death. If she had not spent her money on society, she ha