“The Prince assures me you’ve drawn on your own property at such a rate that the income to be derived from it amounts, to his positive knowledge, to no more than a thousand francs—forty pounds—a year. Surely with your habits and tastes you can’t live on forty pounds. I should add that your husband implies that your property originally was rather a small affair.” “You’ve the most extraordinary tone,” she answered gravely. “What you appear to wish to express is simply this: that from the moment I’ve no more money to give you I’m of no more value than the washed-out tea-leaves in that pot.” Muniment looked down a while at his substantial boot. His companion’s words had brought a flush to his cheek; he appeared to admit to himself and to her that at the point their conversation had reached there was a natural difficulty in his delivering himself. But presently he raised his head, showing a face still slightly embarrassed, but more for her than for himself. “I’ve no intention whatever of saying anything harsh or offensive to you, but since you challenge me perhaps it’s well that I should let you know how inevitably I _do_ consider that in giving your money—or rather your husband’s—to our business you gave the most valuable thing you had to contribute.” “This is the day of plain truths!” she rang out with a high mildness. “You don’t count then any devotion, any intelligence that I may have placed at your service—even rating my faculties modestly?” “I count your intelligence, but I don’t count your devotion, and one’s nothing without the other. You’re not trusted—well, where it makes the difference.” “Not trusted!” the Princess repeated with her splendid stare. “Why I thought I could be hanged to-morrow!” “They may let you hang, perfectly, without letting you act. You’re liable to be weary of us,” he went on; “and indeed I think you’re weary even now.” “Ah you _must_ be a first-rate man—you’re such a brute!” she replied, noticing, as she had noticed before, that he pronounced “weary” _weery_. “I didn’t say you were weary of _me_,” he said with a certain awkwardness. “But you can never live poor—you don’t begin to know the meaning of it.” “Oh no, I’m not tired of you,” she declared as if she wished she were. “In a moment you’ll make me cry with rage, and no man has done that for years. I was very poor when I was a girl,” she added in a different manner. “You yourself recognised it just now in speaking of the insignificant character of my fortune.” “It had to be a fortune to be insignificant,” Muniment smiled. “You’ll go back to your husband!” To this she made no answer, only looking at him with a high, gradual clearance of her heat. “I don’t see after all why they trust you more than they trust me,” she said at last. “I am not sure they do. I’ve heard something this evening that suggests that.” “And may one know what it is?” “A communication which I should have expected to be made through me has been made through another person.”