“Ceilia!”

“Oh no,” Ingram said carelessly, and nursing his knee with both his hands as usual, “traveling is not wicked:  it is only unreasonable.  A traveler, you know, is a person who has a house in one town, and who goes to live in a house in another town, in order to have the pleasure of paying for both.”

“Mr. Ingram,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, “will you talk seriously for one minute, and tell me whether we are to expect to see you in the Tyrol?”

But Ingram was not in a mood for talking seriously, and he waited to hear Mrs. Lorraine strike in with some calmly audacious invitation.  She did not, however, and he turned round from her mother to question her.  He was surprised to find that her eyes were fixed on the ground and that something like a tinge of color was in her face.  He turned rapidly away again.  “Well, Mrs. Kavanagh,” he said with a fine air of indifference, “the last time we spoke about that I was not in the difficulty I am in at present.  How could I go traveling just now, without knowing how to regulate my daily expenses?  Am I to travel with six white horses and silver bells, or trudge on foot with a wallet?”

“But you know quite well,” said Mrs. Lorraine warmly—­“you know you will not touch that money that Mrs. Lavender has left you.”

“Oh, pardon me,” he said:  “I should rejoice to have it if it did not properly belong to some one else.  And the difficulty is, that Mr. Mackenzie is obviously very anxious that neither Mr. Lavender nor Sheila should have it.  If Sheila gets it, of course she will give it to her husband.  Now, if it is not to be given to her, do you think I should regard the money with any particular horror and refuse to touch it?  That would be very romantic, perhaps, but I should be sorry, you know, to give my friends the most disquieting doubts about my sanity.  Romance goes out of a man’s head when the hair gets gray.”

“Until a man has gray hair,” Mrs. Lorraine said, still with some unnecessary fervor, “he does not know that there are things much more valuable than money.  You wouldn’t touch that money just now, and all the thinking and reasoning in the world will never get you to touch it.”

“What am I to do with it?” he said meekly.

“Give it to Mr. Mackenzie, in trust for his daughter,” Mrs. Lorraine said promptly; and then, seeing that her mother had gone to the end of the drawing-room to fetch something or other, she added quickly, “I should be more sorry than I can tell you to find you accepting this money.  You do not wish to have it.  You do not need it.  And if you did take it, it would prove a source of continual embarrassment and regret to you, and no assurances on the part of Mr. Mackenzie would be able to convince you that you had acted rightly by his daughter.  Now, if you simply hand over your responsibilities to him, he cannot refuse them, for the sake of his own child, and you are left with the sense of having acted nobly and generously.  I hope there are many men who would do what I ask you to do, but I have not met many to whom I could make such an appeal with any hope.  But, after all, that is only advice.  I have no right to ask you to do anything like that.  You asked me for my opinion about it.  Well, that is it.  But I should not have asked you to act on it.”