’It is at your option, Miss Nancarrow.  Now I’ll say good-morning to you.  Perhaps you’ll allow me to shake hands with you and congratulate you upon this—­this little fortune.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Totty gave Mr. Barlow’s fat hand a jerk.  He drew himself up, cleared his throat, and stalked to the door, regarding with lofty patronage the signs of poverty about him.  At the door he took off his hat, bowed, departed.

Totty returned to her room.  She resumed her former seat, and began to hum a slow air.  Then she tilted her chair back against the wall, and turned her face upwards musing.

It was not easy for her to realise the meaning of two hundred and fifty pounds.  Reckon it up, for instance, in marmalade and pickles; it became confusing very soon.  Reckon it up in tables and chairs; ah, that was more to the point.  But even then, what a stupendous margin!  For twenty pounds you could furnish a couple of rooms in a way to make all your neighbours envious.  It was like attempting to comprehend infinity by making clear to one’s mind the distance to the moon.

The three conditions; Luke Ackroyd could satisfy them all.  How often he had said that what he wanted was a little capital to establish a comfortable home of his own, when he would feel settled for life.  No thought now of furnished lodgings.  Fancy making one’s husband a present of two hundred and fifty pounds!  Much better that than receiving presents oneself.

She was to meet Luke to-night, and it was time that a definite arrangement was made as to their marriage.  Somehow, Totty did not feel quite so joyous as she ought to have done; she could not fix her mind on the two hundred and fifty pounds, but it wandered off to other things which had nothing to do with money.  ‘Come now,’ she said to herself at length, ’do I care for anybody more than for him?  No; it’s quite certain I don’t.  Do I care much for him himself?  Do I care for him properly?’ Suddenly she thought of Thyrza; she remembered Thyrza’s question:  ‘Do you love him, Totty?’

No, she did not love him.  She had known it for a good many weeks.  And, what was more, she had known perfectly well that he did not love her.

There it was, no doubt.  ’If he loved me, I should love him.  I could; I think I could.  Not like Thyrza loved Mr. Egremont, to go mad about him; that isn’t my style; I wouldn’t be so foolish about any man, not I!  But I could be very fond of him.  And—­there’s no hiding it —­I’m not—­I shouldn’t grieve a bit if we said good-bye to-night and never saw each other again.’

How did she know he didn’t love her?  ’As if I couldn’t tell!  Just listen when he speaks about Thyrza; he’d never speak about me like that, if I ran away from him.  And how he speaks about Lydia; why, even about Lydia he thinks a good deal more than he does about me.  He often talks to me as if I was a man; he wouldn’t if he—­if he loved me.’