“So that, first and last, you have to handle about sixty pounds each week, and all in silver and copper.  Fancy!  What a weight it must be!”

“Ay!” he said, but with less enthusiasm.

“That’s three thousand a-year,” she continued.

Her tone was still innocuously sympathetic.  She seemed to be talking of money as she might have talked of counters.  Nevertheless, he felt that he had been entrapped.

“I expect you must have saved at the very least thirty thousand pounds by this time,” she reflected, judicially, disinterestedly—­speaking as a lawyer might have spoken.

He offered no remark.

“That means another thirty pounds a week,” she resumed.  Decidedly she was marvellous at sums of interest.

He persisted in offering no remark.

“By the way,” she said, “I must look into my household accounts.  How much did you tell me you allowed Mrs. Butt a week for expenses?”

“A pound,” he replied, shortly.

She made no comment.  “You don’t own the house, do you?” she inquired.

“No,” he said.

“What’s the rent?”

“Eighteen pounds,” he said.  Reluctant is a word that inadequately describes his attitude.

“The worst of this house is that it has no bathroom,” she remarked.  “Still, eighteen pounds a year is eighteen pounds a year.”

Her tone was faultless, in its innocent, sympathetic common sense.  The truth was, it was too faultless; it rendered James furious with a fury that was dangerous, because it had to be suppressed.

Then suddenly she left the table.

“The Kiel butter at a shilling a pound is quite good enough, Georgiana,” he heard her exhorting the servant in the scullery.

Ten minutes later, she put ten sovereigns in front of him.

“There’s that ten-pound note,” she said, politely (but not quite accurately).  “I’ve got enough of my own to get on with.”

She fled ere he could reply.

And not a word had he contrived to say to her concerning Emanuel.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WORLD

A few days later James Ollerenshaw was alone in the front room, checking various accounts for repairs of property in Turnhill, when twin letters fell into the quietude of the apartment.  The postman—­the famous old postman of Bursley, who on fine summer days surmounted the acute difficulty of tender feet by delivering mails in worsted slippers—­had swiftly pushed the letters, as usual, through the slit in the door; but, nevertheless, their advent had somehow the air of magic, as, indeed, the advent of letters always had.  Mr. Ollerenshaw glanced curiously from his chair, over his spectacles, at the letters as they lay dead on the floor.  Their singular appearance caused him to rise at once and pick them up.  They were sealed with a green seal, and addressed in a large and haughty hand—­one to Helen