I know also that I
mean to pay you."

"Don't talk about that. I don't know how at such a time as this you
can bring yourself to mention it." Then she rose from her seat and
flashed into wrath, carried on by the spirit of her own words. "Look
here, George; if you send me any of that woman's money, by the living
God I will send it back to herself. To buy me with her money! But it
is so like a man."

"I didn't mean that. Sir Harry is to pay all my debts."

"And will not that be the same? Will it not be her money? Why is he
to pay your debts? Because he loves you?"

"It is all a family arrangement. You don't quite understand."

"Of course I don't understand. Such a one as I cannot lift myself so
high above the earth. Great families form a sort of heaven of their
own, which poor broken, ill-conditioned, wretched, common creatures
such as I am cannot hope to comprehend. But, by heaven, what a lot of
the vilest clay goes to the making of that garden of Eden! Look here,
George;--you have nothing of your own?"

"Not much, indeed."

"Nothing. Is not that so? You can answer me at any rate."

"You know all about it," he said,--truly enough, for she did know.

"And you cannot earn a penny."

"I don't know that I can. I never was very good at earning anything."

"It isn't gentlemanlike, is it? But I can earn money."

"By George! yes. I've often envied you. I have indeed."

"How flattering! As far as it went you should have had it
all,--nearly all,--if you could have been true to me."

"But, Lucy,--about the family?"

"And about your debts? Of course I couldn't pay debts which were
always increasing. And of course your promises for the future were
false. We both knew that they were false when they were made. Did
we not?" She paused for an answer, but he made none. "They meant
nothing; did they? He is dead now."

"Morton is dead?"

"Yes; he died in San Francisco, months ago."

"I couldn't have known that, Lucy; could I?"

"Don't be a fool! What difference would it have made? Don't pretend
anything so false. It would be disgusting on the very face of it. It
mattered nothing to you whether he lived or died. When is it to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"Your marriage with this ill-looking young woman, who has got money,
but whom you do not even pretend to love."

It struck even George that this was a way in which Emily Hotspur
should not be described. She had been acknowledged to be the beauty
of the last seaso