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II
“Can’t you give it back, Mums?”
“Really, Lynn darling! I went straight to the bank with it. And then I paid Arthurs and
Bodgham and Knebworth. Knebworth was getting quite abusive. Oh, my dear, the relief! I
haven’t been able to sleep for nights and nights. Really, Rosaleen was most understanding and
nice about it.”
Lynn said bitterly:
“And I suppose you’ll go to her again and again now.”
“I hope it won’t be necessary, dear. I shall try to be very economical, you know that. But of
course everything is so expensive nowadays. And it gets worse and worse.”
“Yes, and we shall get worse and worse. Going on cadging.”
Adela flushed.
“I don’t think that’s a nice way of putting it, Lynn. As I explained to Rosaleen, we had
always depended on Gordon.”
“We shouldn’t have. That’s what’s wrong, we shouldn’t have,” Lynn added, “He’s
right to despise us.”
“Who despises us?”
“That odious David Hunter.”
“Really,” said Mrs. Marchmont with dignity, “I don’t see that it can matter in the least
what David Hunter thinks. Fortunately he wasn’t at Furrowbank this morning—otherwise I dare
say he would have influenced that girl. She’s completely under his thumb, of course.”
Lynn shifted from one foot to the other.
“What did you mean, Mums, when you said—that first morning I was home—‘If he is her
brother?’”
“Oh, that.” Mrs. Marchmont looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, there’s been a certain
amount of gossip, you know.”
Lynn merely waited inquiringly. Mrs. Marchmont coughed.
“That type of young woman—the adventuress type (of course poor Gordon was completely
taken in)—they’ve usually got a—well, a young man of their own in the background. Suppose
she says to Gordon she’s got a brother—wires to him in Canada or wherever he was. This man
turns up. How is Gordon to know whether he’s her brother or not? Poor Gordon, absolutely
infatuated no doubt, and believing everything she said. And so her ‘brother’ comes with them
to England—poor Gordon quite unsuspecting.”
Lynn said fiercely:
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”
Mrs. Marchmont raised her eyebrows.
“Really, my dear—”
“He’s not like that. And she—she isn’t either. She’s a fool perhaps, but she’s sweet—
yes, she’s really sweet. It’s just people’s foul minds. I don’t believe it, I tell you.”
Mrs. Marchmont said with dignity:
“There’s really no need to shout.”
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