Part 16 (1/2)

He lay perfectly still, except that he raised his hand and puffed at his extinct cigar. She looked down at the pattern on the Persian rug beside his couch--a symmetrical scroll of old rose, on a black ground sown with multicolored flowerets.

”I suppose it's the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs you owe the money to?”

”And the Compton heirs, and old Miss Burnaby, and the two Misses Brown, and--”

”Haven't they anything left?”

”Oh yes. It isn't all gone, by any means.” Then he added, as if to make a clean breast of the affair and be done with it: ”The personal property--what you may call the cash--is mostly gone! Those that have owned real estate--like the Rodmans and f.a.n.n.y Burnaby--well, they've got that still.”

”I see.” She continued to sit looking meditatively down at the rug. ”I suppose,” she ventured, after long thinking, ”that that's the money we've been living on all these years?”

”Yes; in the main.” He felt it useless to quibble or to try to extenuate the facts.

”How many years would that be?”

”I'm not very sure; on and off, it's about ten since I began using some of their money to--help out my income. Latterly--you may as well know it--I haven't had any real income of my own at all.”

”So that their money has been paying for--for all this.”

Her hands made a confused little gesture, indicating the luxury of his personal appointments and of the room.

He shrugged his shoulders and arched his eyebrows in a kind of protest, which was nevertheless not denial. ”W-well! If you choose to put it so!”

”And for me, too,” she went on, looking at him now with a bewildered opening of her large gray eyes--”for my visits, my clothes, my maid--everything!”

”I don't see any need,” he said, with a touch of peevishness, ”for going so terribly into detail.”

”I don't see how it can be helped. It's so queer--and startling--to think I've had so much that wasn't mine.”

”You mustn't think it was deliberately planned--” he began, weakly.

”And now the suggestion is,” she interrupted, ”that Mr. Davenant should pay for it. That seems to me to make it even worse than--than before.”

”I confess I don't follow you there,” he complained. ”If he doesn't--then I go to Singville.”

”Wouldn't you rather?”

He raised himself stiffly into a sitting posture. ”Would _you_?”

She did not hesitate in her reply. ”Yes, papa. I _would_ rather--if I were you.”

”But since you're not me--since you are yourself--would you still rather that I went to Singville?”

There was a little lift to her chin, a faint color in her face as she replied: ”I'd rather pay--however I did it. I'd rather pay--in any way--than ask some one else to do it.”

He fell back on the cus.h.i.+on of violet brocade. ”So would I--if I had only myself to think of. We're alike in that.”

”Do you mean that you'd rather do it if it wasn't for me?”

”I've got to take everything into consideration. It's no use for me to make bad worse by refusing a good offer. I must try to make the best of a bad business for every one's sake. I don't want to take Davenant's money. It's about as pleasant for me as swallowing a knife. But I'd swallow a knife if we could only hush the thing up long enough for you to be married--and for me to settle some other things. I shouldn't care what happened after that. They might take me and chuck me into any hole they pleased.”