‘Arrangement?’ she muttered.  Her cheeks, darkly red a moment before, began to fade.

‘Yes,’ he said.  ’I hope you will think it not ungenerous.  It will rid you of the need to do this—­sort of thing, and put you—­put you in a comfortable position.  Of course, you know,’ he continued in a tone of patronage, under which her heart burned if her cheeks did not, ’that a good deal of water has run under the bridge since we talked in the garden at Marlborough?  That things are changed.’

Her eyelids quivered under the cruel stroke.  But her only answer was, ‘They are.’  Yet she wondered how and why; for if she had thought herself an heiress, he had not—­then.

‘You admit it, I am sure?’ he persisted.

‘Yes,’ she answered resolutely.

‘And that to—­to resume, in fact, the old terms would be—­impossible,’

‘Quite impossible.’  Her tone was as hard as his was easy.

‘I thought so,’ Sir George continued complacently.  ’Still, I could not, of course, leave you here, child.  As I have said, my friends think that something should be done for you; and I am only too happy to do it.  I have consulted them, and we have talked the matter over.  By the way,’ with a look round, ’perhaps your mother should be here—­Mrs. Masterson, I mean?  Is she in the house?’

‘No,’ she answered, her face flaming scarlet; for pride had conquered pain.  She hated him.  Oh, how she hated him and the hideous dress which in her foolish dream—­when, hearing him at the door, she had looked for something very different—­she had hurriedly put on; and the loose tangle of hair which she had dragged with trembling fingers from its club so that it now hung sluttishly over her ear.  She longed, as she had never longed before, to confront him in all her beauty; to be able to say to him, ‘Choose where you will, can you buy form or face like this?’ Instead she stood before him, prisoned in this shapeless dress, a slattern, a drab, a thing whereat to curl the lip.

‘Well, I am sorry she is not here,’ he resumed.  ’It would have given a—­a kind of legality to the offer,’ he continued with an easy laugh.  ’To tell you the truth, the amount was not fixed by me, but by my friend, Dr. Addington, who interested himself in your behalf.  He thought that an allowance of a hundred guineas a year, child, properly secured, would place you in comfort, and—­and obviate all this,’ with a negligent wave of the hand that took in the garden and the half-scoured stone, ’at the same time,’ he added, ‘that it would not be unworthy of the donor.’  And he bowed, smiling.

‘A hundred guineas?’ she said slowly.  ‘A year?’

‘Yes.’

‘Properly secured?’

‘To be sure, child.’

‘On your word?’ with a sudden glance at him.  ’Of course, I could not ask better security!  Surely, sir, there’s but one thing to be said.  ’Tis too generous, too handsome!’

‘Tut-tut!’ he answered, wondering at her way of taking it.