You have decide’ what sum?

[He nods decidedly.]

What?

Hawcastle [sharply, with determination, yet quietly].  A hundred and fifty thousand pounds!

Madame de Champigny [excited and breathless].  My friend!  Will she?

[Turns and stares toward Ethel’s room, where the piano is still heard softly playing.]

Hawcastle.  Not for Almeric, but to be the future Countess of Hawcastle.  My sister-in-law hasn’t been her chaperone for a year for nothing.  And, by Jove, she hasn’t done it for nothing, either!

[He laughs grimly, moving back from the table.]

But she’s deserved all I shall allow her.

Madame de Champigny [coldly].  Why?

Hawcastle [rising].  It was she who found these people.  Indeed, we might say that both you and I owe her something also. [Comes around behind table to Madame de Champigny.] Even a less captious respectability than Lady Creech’s might have looked askance at the long friendship [kisses her hand] which has existed between us.  Yet she has always countenanced us, though she must have guessed—­a great many things.  And she will help us to urge an immediate marriage.  You know as well as I do that unless it is immediate, there’ll be the devil to pay.  Don’t miss that essential:  something must be done at once.  We’re at the breaking-point—­if you like the words—­a most damnable insolvency.

[Enter Almeric from the grove.  He is a fair, fresh-colored Englishman of twenty-five, handsome in a rather vacuous way.  He wears white duck riding-breeches, light-tan leather riding-gaiters and shoes, a riding-coat of white duck, a waistcoat light tan in shade, and a high riding-stock, the collar of which is white, the “puffed” tie pink; a Panama hat with a fold of light tan and white silk round the crown.  Carries a riding-crop.]

Almeric [as he enters].  Hello, Governor!

[His voice is habitually loud and his accent somewhat foppish, having a little of the “Guardsman” affectation of languor and indifference.]

Howdy, Countess!

[He drops into a chair at the breakfast-table with a slight effect of sprawling.]

Hawcastle [sharply].  Almeric!

Almeric.  Out riding a bit ago, you know, with Miss Granger-Simpson. 
Rippin’ girl, isn’t she?

Hawcastle [leaning across the table toward him, anxiously].  Go on!

Almeric [continuing, slapping his gaiters carelessly with his crop]. 
Didn’t stop with her, though.

Hawcastle [angrily].  Why not?

Almeric.  A sort of man in the village got me to go look at a bull-terrier pup.  Wonderful little beast for points.  Jolly luck—­wasn’t it?  He’s got a head on him—­

Hawcastle [bitterly].  We’ll concede his tremendous advantage over you in that respect.