, growing old and lonely."

"So are we all!" he cried, with a lapse of tone that was now
characteristic in him.

"She oughtn't to be so isolated from her proper relatives."

There was a moment's silence. Still playing with the book, he remarked,
"You forget, she's got her favourite nephew."

A bright red flush spread over her cheeks. "What is the matter with you
this afternoon?" she asked. "I should think you'd better go for a walk."

"Before I go, tell me what is the matter with you." He also flushed.
"Why do you want me to make it up with my aunt?"

"Because it's right and proper."

"So? Or because she is old?"

"I don't understand," she retorted. But her eyes dropped. His sudden
suspicion was true: she was legacy hunting.

"Agnes, dear Agnes," he began with passing tenderness, "how can you
think of such things? You behave like a poor person. We don't want any
money from Aunt Emily, or from any one else. It isn't virtue that makes
me say it: we are not tempted in that way: we have as much as we want
already."

"For the present," she answered, still looking aside.

"There isn't any future," he cried in a gust of despair.

"Rickie, what do you mean?"

What did he mean? He meant that the relations between them were
fixed--that there would never be an influx of interest, nor even of
passion. To the end of life they would go on beating time, and this was
enough for her. She was content with the daily round, the common task,
performed indifferently. But he had dreamt of another helpmate, and of
other things.

"We don't want money--why, we don't even spend any on travelling. I've
invested all my salary and more. As far as human foresight goes, we
shall never want money." And his thoughts went out to the tiny grave.
"You spoke of 'right and proper,' but the right and proper thing for my
aunt to do is to leave every penny she's got to Stephen."

Her lip quivered, and for one moment he thought that she was going to
cry. "What am I to do with you?" she said. "You talk like a person in
poetry."

"I'll put it in prose. He's lived with her for twenty years, and he
ought to be paid for it."

Poor Agnes! Indeed, what was she to do? The first moment she set foot
in Cadover she had thought, "Oh, here is money. We must try and get it."
Being a lady, she never mentioned the thought to her husband, but
she concluded that it would occur to him too. And now, though it had
occurred to him at last, he would not even writ