"But you might have made inquiries, anybody would have told you; almost, one might say, the first person you met in the street. We are not the kind of people who hide ourselves in holes." "No, not in holes!" "The moment we learnt what had occurred--learnt, as I have observed, by the sheerest accident,--we rushed back to Holtye, that very moment; though to do so involved us in the most serious inconvenience; but we had no option." "We had no option." "Because, not only were we informed, by accident, that your father was dead and buried, but we were also told, at the same time, what struck us as being so surprising as to be almost incredible, that he had not left behind him even so much as a sixpence." "Not even so much as a sixpence!" "You will remember, Miss Lindsay--that is, I take it for granted that information was given to you to that effect, that before sanctioning my--our--son Robert's engagement to you I made a special point of calling upon your father, who then and there informed, I may say, assured, me that, on the occasion of your marriage, he would present you with a house and furniture, and settle on you five thousand pounds a year. On the strength of that positive and definite assurance I--we--gave our consent, which, without it, we never should have dreamt of doing. We have our duty to perform, not only to our son, but to ourselves, and I may say, to our family, of which we are the representatives; I therefore offer no excuse for taking advantage of the first opportunity which arises to ask if your father has left his affairs in a condition which will enable you to carry out that assurance. On behalf of the Countess of Mountdennis, and of myself, I beg you, Miss Lindsay, in answering that question, to be perfectly plain and perfectly candid." "Perfectly plain and perfectly candid!" The Earl, very tall, very straight, very thin, waved his hard felt hat in one hand, and his gold-knobbed malacca cane in the other, in a manner which was hardly so impressive as he perhaps intended; the Countess, her gloved hands clasped in front of her, wagged not only her head, but her whole body, as if to punctuate, and notify her approval, of his remarks as they fell from him. Nora was silent. At the back of her mind had been the consciousness that, sooner or later, this question would have to be confronted; but she had not anticipated that it would be addressed to her so suddenly, so brusquely, with such a stand-and-deliver air. When she began to speak her lips were tremulous; and, though she might not have been aware of it, her eyes were moist; the feeling was strong upon her how different it all was from what she had expected. "I--I'm sorry to say that, so far as we have been able to ascertain, the state of my father's affairs is not--not altogether satisfactory."