“As I was saying, Sara, sooner or later you’ll have to turn out of the old Court.  It’s entailed, and the income with it.  But I’ve a clear four hundred a year, altogether apart from the Barrow moneys, and that, at my death, will be yours.”

“I don’t want to hear about it!” burst out Sara passionately.  “It’s hateful even talking of such things.”

Patrick smiled, amused and a little touched by youth’s lack of worldly wisdom.

“Don’t be a fool, my dear.  I shan’t die a day sooner for having made my will—­and I shall die a deal more comfortably, knowing that you are provided for.  I promised your mother that, as far as lay in my power, I would shield you from wrecking your life as she wrecked hers.  And money—­a secure little income of her own—­is a very good sort of shield for a women.  Four hundred’s not enough to satisfy a mercenary individual, but it’s enough to enable a woman to marry for love—­and not for a home!” He spoke with a kind of repressed bitterness, as though memory had stirred into fresh flame the embers of some burnt-out passion of regret, and Sara looked at him with suddenly aroused interest.

But apparently Patrick did not sense the question that troubled on her lips, or, if he did, had no mind to answer it, for he went on in lighter tones: 

“There, that’s enough about business for the present.  I only wanted you to know that, whatever happens, you will be all right as far as bread-and-cheese are concerned.”

“I believe you think that’s all I should care about!” exclaimed Sara stormily.

Patrick smiled.  He had not been a citizen of the world for over sixty years without acquiring the grim knowledge that neither intense happiness nor deep grief suffice to deaden for very long the pinpricks of material discomfort.  But the worldly-wise old man possessed a broad tolerance for the frailties of human nature, and his smile held nothing of contempt, but only a whimsical humour touched with kindly understanding.

“I know you better than that, my dear,” he answered quietly.  “But I often think of what I once heard an old working-woman, down in the village, say.  She had just lost her husband, and the rector’s wife was handing out the usual platitudes, and holding forth on the example of Christian fortitude exhibited by a very wealthy lady in the neighbourhood, who had also been recently widowed.  ’That’s all very well, ma’am,’ said my old woman drily, ’but fat sorrow’s a deal easier to bear than lean sorrow.’  And though it may sound unromantic, it’s the raw truth—­only very few people are sincere enough to acknowledge it.”

In the weeks that followed, Patrick seemed to recover a large measure of his accustomed vigour.  He was extraordinarily alert and cheerful—­so alive that Sara began to hope Dr. McPherson had been mistaken in his opinion, and that there might yet remain many more good years of the happy comradeship that existed between herself and her guardian.