He frowned slightly, while a dark flush rose to his forehead.  Already Gabriella was learning how dangerously easy it was to irritate George.  Serious discussions always appeared to disturb him, and at the first allusion to the responsibilities he had assumed, she could see the look of bored restlessness creep into his face.  It was evidently abhorrent to him to hear her talk about business; but with her practical nature and her fundamental common sense it was impossible that she should be content to remain in a fool’s paradise of financial mysteries.  She had only the vaguest idea how he earned a living, and a still vaguer one of what that living represented.  There was an impression in her mind that he worked in his father’s office somewhere in Wall Street—­he had once given her the number—­and that he went “downtown” every morning after breakfast and did not get home to luncheon.  Cousin Jimmy had once told her that George’s father was a stockbroker, but this information conveyed little to her mind.  The men she knew in Richmond were lawyers, doctors, clergymen, or engaged, like Cousin Jimmy, in the “tobacco business,” and she supposed that “a stockbroker” must necessarily belong to a profession which was restricted to New York.  The whole matter was hazy in her thoughts, but she hoped in time, by intelligent and tactful application, to overcome her ignorance as well as George’s deeply rooted objection to her enlightenment.

“Well, you see, my income is uncertain, Gabriella.  It depends a good deal upon the stock market and the sort of stuff we’ve been buying.  Look here, darling, don’t, for heaven sake, get the business bee in your bonnet.  A mannish woman is worse than poison, and the less you know about stocks the more attractive you will be.  Mother has lived for thirty years with father, and she doesn’t know any more how he makes his money than you do at this minute.”

This was as lucid, she suspected, as George was ever likely to be on the subject, and, since he was becoming visibly annoyed, she abandoned her fruitless search for information.  After she was married there would be time and opportunity to find out all that she wanted to know; and even if he never told her anything more—­well, she was quite accustomed to the masculine habit of never telling women anything more.  Her mother and Jane were as ignorant of finance as they had been in their cradles; Cousin Pussy spoke of the “tobacco business” as if it were a sacred mystery superior to the delicate feminine faculties; and while Gabriella was engaged to Arthur, he had fallen into the habit of gently reminding her that she “knew nothing of law.”

“Very well, dearest, I shan’t bother you,” she said cheerfully, “only, of course, I couldn’t possibly leave mother with Jane and Charley.  She doesn’t realize it, but she would be perfectly miserable.”

“She told me that leaving Richmond was like death to her.”

“That’s only because she knows she’s going,” answered Gabriella, but her endeavour to explain her mother’s habit of mind appeared to her to be so hopeless that she added unconvincingly:  “You can’t imagine how dependent she is on me.  Jane doesn’t know how to manage her at all, though they are so much alike.”