Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/383

Rh changes there, the changes that nobody wanted, nobody approved of—tjat Truscomb and all the other experts had opposed and derided from the ﬁrst—these changes, even modiﬁed and arrested, had already involved so much of her income, that it might be years—yes, he said years!—before she would feel herself free again—free of her own fortune, of Cicely’s fortune … of the money poor Dick Westmore had meant his wife and child to enjoy!

Justine listened anxiously to this confused outpouring of resentments. Bessy’s born incapacity for ﬁgures made it indeed possible that the facts came on her as a surprise—that she had quite forgotten the temporary reduction of her income, and had begun to imagine that what she had saved in one direction was hers to spend in another. All this was conceivable. But why had Mr. Tredegar drawn so dark a picture of the future? Or was it only that, thwarted of her immediate desire, Bessy’s disappointment blackened the farthest verge of her horizon? Justine, though aware of her friend’s lack of perspective, suspected that a conniving hand had helped to throw the prospect out of drawing.…

Could it be possible, then, that Mr. Tredegar was among those who desired a divorce? That the inﬂuences at which Mrs. Ansell had hinted proceeded not only from Blanche Carbury and her group? Helpless amid this rush of forebodings, Justine could do no [ 367 ]