Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/145

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE of, and Mrs. Brook's caller had moved, even in the short space of time, so far in quite another direction as to have drawn from her the little cold question: "'Presents'? You don't mean money?"

He clearly felt the importance of expressing at least by his silence and his eye-glass what he meant. "Her extravagance is beyond everything, and though there are bills enough, God knows, that do come in to me, I don't see how she pulls through unless there are others that go elsewhere."

Mrs. Brookenham had given him his tea—her own she had placed on a small table near her, and she could now respond freely to the impulse felt, on this, of settling herself to something of real interest. Except to Harold she was incapable of reproach, though there were shades, of course, in her resignation, and her daughter's report of her to Mr. Longdon as conscious of an absence of prejudice would have been justified, for a spectator, by the particular feeling that Mr. Cashmere's speech caused her to disclose. What did this feeling wonderfully appear unless strangely irrelevant? "I've no patience when I hear you talk as if you weren't horribly rich."

He looked at her an instant as if with the fancy that she might have derived that impression from Harold. "What has that to do with it? Does a rich man enjoy any more than a poor his wife's making a fool of him?"

Her eyes opened wider: it was one of her very few ways of betraying amusement. There was little indeed to be amused at here except his choice of the particular invidious name. "You know I don't believe a word you say."

Mr. Cashmore drank his tea, then rose to carry the cup somewhere and put it down, declining, with a motion, any assistance. When he was on the sofa again he resumed their intimate talk. "I like tremendously to be 135