‘Would you like to go and live in the country, Nora?’ He looked at her audaciously for a moment and then his eyes shifted.

‘For the summer, you mean?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ’for the summer and the winter too.  Somewhere out Sneyd way.’

‘And leave here?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But what about the house, Jack?’

‘Sell it, if you like,’ said John lightly.

‘Oh, no!  I shouldn’t like that at all,’ she replied, nervously but amiably.  She wished to believe that his suggestion about selling the house was merely an idle notion thrown out on the spur of the moment, but she could not.

‘You wouldn’t?’

She shook her head.  ’What has made you think of going to live in the country?’ she asked him, using a tone of gentle, mild curiosity.  ’How should you get to the works in the morning?’

‘There’s a very good train service from Sneyd to Knype,’ he said.  ’But look here, Nora, why wouldn’t you care to sell the house?’

It was perfectly clear to her that, having mortgaged her house, he had now made up his mind to sell it.  He must therefore still be in financial difficulties, and she had unwittingly misled Uncle Meshach.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered coldly.  ’I can’t explain to you why.  But I shouldn’t.’  And she privately resolved that nothing should induce her to assent to this monstrous proposal.  Her heart hardened to steel.  She felt prepared to suffer any unpleasantness, any indignity, rather than give way.

‘It isn’t as if Hillport wasn’t changing,’ he went on, politely argumentative.  ’It is changing.  In another ten years all the decent estates will have been broken up, and we shall be left alone in the middle of streets of villas rented at nineteen guineas to escape the house duty.  You know the sort of thing....  And I’ve had a very fair offer for the place.’

‘Whom from?’

’Well, Dain.  I know he’s wanted the house a long time.  Of course, he’s a hard nut to crack, is Dain.  But he went up to two thousand, and yesterday I got him to make it guineas.  That’s a good price, Nora.’

‘Is it?’ she exclaimed absently.

‘I should just imagine it was!’ said John.

So it was expected of her that she should surrender her home, her domain, her kingdom, the beautiful and mellow creation of her intelligence; and that she should surrender it to David Dain, and to the impossible Mrs. Dain, and to their impossible niece.  She remembered one of Milly’s wicked tales about Mrs. Dain and the niece.  Milly had met Mrs. Dain in the street, and in response to an inquiry about the health of the hypochondriacal niece, Mrs. Dain, gorgeously attired, had replied:  ‘Her had but just rallied up off th’ squab as I come out.’  These were the people who wanted to evict her from her house.  And they would cover its walls with new papers, and its floors with new carpets, in their own appalling taste; and they would crowd the rooms with furniture as fat, clumsy, and disgusting as themselves.  And Mrs. Dain would hold sewing meetings in the drawing-room, and would stand chattering with tradesmen at the front door, and would drive out to Sneyd to pay a call on Leonora and tell her how pleased they all were with the place!