Up to this moment none of their talk had been quite real to Mary.  She had betrayed no inattention to him and when it had come her turn to carry on the conversational stream she had done so adequately and even with a certain vivacity.  But it had meant no more than an occupation; something that passed the time and held her potential thoughts at bay.

This last observation of his, though, struck a different note.  He had done full justice to his pleasure in Paula’s success at the very beginning of their talk.  Now he meant something by it.  Leaning forward a little for a keener look at him, she asked what it was that he meant.

He was a little surprised to be brought to book like that, but he made hardly an effort to fence with her.  “I was glad, I meant, for purely non-sentimental reasons.  Her success may prove, I suppose, a practical solution of some difficulties.”

“Practical?” she echoed.  “You don’t mean,—­yes, I suppose you do mean,—­money difficulties.  Do you mean that Paula’s going to be invited to support the family now?” She finished with a little laugh and he winced at it.  “Father said something like that to me one day while I was down south with him,” she explained.  “Only he said it as a joke,—­a sort of joke.  That’s why I laughed.”

“He talked to you then about his affairs?” Wallace asked.  “May I ...  Do you mind telling me what he said?”

“Of course not, if I can remember.  He’d been remiss, he said, about making money.  He said that if he had died, then when he was so ill, there wouldn’t have been, beyond his life insurance which was for Paula, much more than enough to pay his debts.  Practically nothing for Rush and me is what that came to.  I pointed out to him that we could take care of ourselves, and he said that anyway as soon as he could get back into practise, he’d begin to make a lot of money and save.  It must be a good deal worse,—­the whole situation I mean—­than I took it to be, for you to mean that seriously about Paula.”

She had managed an appearance of composure but in truth she was badly shaken.  Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy.  The notion she got from the look in his face that there was something dubious about her father’s solvency, was terrifying.  She hid her hands under the table so that he shouldn’t see they were trembling.  She wanted the truth from him now, rather than vaguely comforting generalties, and if she betrayed her real feelings, these latter were what she would drive him back upon.

“Can you tell me,” she asked after a pause, “exactly how bad it is?”

He couldn’t furnish details.  He told her though that there couldn’t be any doubt her father’s affairs were more involved than his summary of them had made them appear.  “He isn’t a very good bookkeeper, of course,—­never was; and he has never taken remonstrances very seriously.  Why, about all I know is that Martin Whitney is worried.  He tried to dissuade John from going in anywhere near so heavily on the Hickory Hill project.—­And that, of course, was before we had any reason to suppose that his ability to earn money was going to be ...”