Priscilla sat dumfoundered.  She was looking quite straight for the first time at certain pitiless aspects of life.  For the first time she was face to face with the sternness, the hardness, the relentlessness of everything that has to do with money so soon as one has not got any.  It seemed almost incredible to her that she who had given so lavishly to anybody and everybody, who had been so glad to give, who had thought of money when she thought of it at all as a thing to be passed on, as a thing that soiled one unless it was passed on, but that, passed on, became strangely glorified and powerful for good—­it seemed incredible that she should be in need of it herself, and unable to think of a single person who would give her some.  And what a little she needed:  just to tide them over the next week or two till they had got theirs from home; yet even that little, the merest nothing compared to what she had flung about in the village, was as unattainable as though it had been a fortune.  “Can we—­can we not borrow?” she said at last.

“Yes ma’am, we can and we must.  I will proceed this evening to Symford Hall and borrow of Augustus.”

“No,” said Priscilla; so suddenly and so energetically that Fritzing started.

“No, ma’am?” he repeated, astonished.  “Why, he is the very person.  In fact he is our only hope.  He must and shall help us.”

“No,” repeated Priscilla, still more energetically.

“Pray ma’am,” said Fritzing, shrugging his shoulders, “are these women’s whims—­I never comprehended them rightly and doubt if I ever shall—­are they to be allowed to lead us even in dangerous crises?  To lead us to certain shipwreck, ma’am?  The alternatives in this case are three.  Permit me to point them out.  Either we return to Kunitz—­”

“Oh,” shivered Priscilla, shrinking as from a blow.

“Or, after a brief period of starvation and other violent discomfort, we are cast into gaol for debt—­”

“Oh?” shivered Priscilla, in tones of terrified inquiry.

“Or, I borrow of Augustus.”

“No,” said Priscilla, just as energetically as before.

“Augustus is wealthy.  Augustus is willing.  Ma’am, I would stake my soul that he is willing.”

“You shall not borrow of him,” said Priscilla.  “He—­he’s too ill.”

“Well then, ma’am,” said Fritzing with a gesture of extreme exasperation, “since you cannot be allowed to be cast into gaol there remains but Kunitz.  Like the dogs of the Scriptures we will return—­”

“Why not borrow of the vicar?” interrupted Priscilla.  “Surely he would be glad to help any one in difficulties?”

“Of the vicar?  What, of the father of the young man who insulted your Grand Ducal Highness and whom I propose to kill in duel my first leisure moment?  Ma’am, there are depths of infamy to which even a desperate man will not descend.”

Priscilla dug holes in the tablecloth with the point of the pencil.  “I can’t conceive,” she said, “why you gave Annalise all that money.  So much.”