She nodded her pretty head. “Yes, from what auntie told me, he has been spending a lot more than he ought, and has got to pull up for a time. These sorts of crises occur now and again. We have had about a dozen of them at least since we came here, and at such times entertaining has to be cut down with a ruthless hand. In Curzon Street I don’t suppose the outgoings were a quarter what they are here. Auntie says he ought never to have bought the place, considering the expense it entails. He gets a lot of enjoyment out of it, of course, but he also gets a lot of worry.” “And yet I suppose he is a shrewd business man?” “He must be, or he could not make the money he does. But you see he has got the spendthrift temperament. If he takes a fancy to a thing, he will have it, whether he can afford it or not. And the fatal thing about him, and it is that which worries my aunt more, he has no hesitation about going into debt, if he hasn’t got ready money to pay for his whims.” “Your aunt does not share his extravagant ideas, then?” “Oh, dear no. She has a nice little income of her own which she lives up to, but I am sure she never exceeds it. And she has a most wholesome horror of debt. I know she is awfully worried now because some of the tradespeople’s accounts are overdue; they are getting a bit pressing.” Delightful as Effington was, and perfectly satisfying to the lover of natural beauty, Lydon thought residence there was dearly purchased by these crises to which she had alluded. So Mr. Stormont was behindhand with the local tradespeople! What a horrible situation! They would begin to gossip presently, and then the bubble would be burst amongst the neighbours. “There was a perfect orgy of spending for a couple of months just before you paid us your first visit,” said Gloria after a short pause during which her lover was ruminating on the hollowness of the position at this splendid country residence. “A big dinner party nearly every day in the week, on the usual lavish scale, and all this time he was giving liberally, not to say ostentatiously, to all the local charities. I suppose it was then he overran the constable. You came in at the fag end of it. Since then the motto seems to have been retrenchment all round, with a disastrous effect on my uncle’s spirits.” “These crises worry you a good bit, don’t they?” queried her lover. “To tell the truth, they do. Much as I love the place--and nobody could live at Effington without loving it--I often wish that we could have a place that entailed smaller outgoings. And, of course, one is always haunted by the fear that one day he will get himself into a terrible mess from which he cannot extricate himself.”