proposition
was something like this: Properly worked and without rebates to the
tenants and keeping up schools and things, the Branshaw estate should
have brought in about five thousand a year when Edward had it. It
brought in actually about four. (I am talking in pounds, not dollars.)
Edward's excesses with the Spanish Lady had reduced its value to about
three--as the maximum figure, without reductions. Leonora wanted to get
it back to five.

She was, of course, very young to be faced with such a
proposition--twenty-four is not a very advanced age. So she did things
with a youthful vigour that she would, very likely, have made more
merciful, if she had known more about life. She got Edward remarkably on
the hop. He had to face her in a London hotel, when he crept back from
Monte Carlo with his poor tail between his poor legs. As far as I can
make out she cut short his first mumblings and his first attempts at
affectionate speech with words something like: "We're on the verge
of ruin. Do you intend to let me pull things together? If not I shall
retire to Hendon on my jointure." (Hendon represented a convent to
which she occasionally went for what is called a "retreat" in Catholic
circles.) And poor dear Edward knew nothing--absolutely nothing. He did
not know how much money he had, as he put it, "blued" at the tables. It
might have been a quarter of a million for all he remembered. He did not
know whether she knew about La Dolciquita or whether she imagined that
he had gone off yachting or had stayed at Monte Carlo. He was just dumb
and he just wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk. Leonora did
not make him talk and she said nothing herself.

I do not know much about English legal procedure--I cannot, I mean, give
technical details of how they tied him up. But I know that, two days
later, without her having said more than I have reported to you, Leonora
and her attorney had become the trustees, as I believe it is called,
of all Edward's property, and there was an end of Edward as the good
landlord and father of his people. He went out. Leonora then had three
thousand a year at her disposal. She occupied Edward with getting
himself transferred to a part of his regiment that was in Burma--if that
is the right way to put it. She herself had an interview, lasting a
week or so--with Edward's land-steward. She made him understand that the
estate would have to yield up to its last penny. Before they left for
India