"What do you think about fixing some of the rooms over new? You might get tired of seeing the same things for so long. I saw real elegant furniture in Boston."
She looked about indifferently. "I think I wouldn't like it changed," she remarked, almost in the manner of a defense. "I suppose it does seem worn to you; but I'm used to it; there are so many associations. I am certain I'd be lost in new hangings."
Jason was so completely silenced by her reply that he felt he must have shown some confusion, for her gaze deliberately turned to him. "Is there any particular thing you would like repaired?" she inquired.
"No, of course not," he said hastily. "I think it's all splendid. I wouldn't change a curtain, only--but...." He cursed himself for a clumsy fool while Honora continued to study him. He endeavored to shield himself behind the trivial business of lighting a cheroot; but he felt Honora's query searching him out. Finally, to his extreme dismay, he heard her say:
"Jason, I believe you think I married you for money!"
Pretense, he realized, would be no good now.
"Something like that did occur to me," he acknowledged desperately.
"Really," she told him sharply. "I could be cross very easily. You are too stupid. Father did wonderfully well on his voyages, and his profit was invested by Frederic Cozzens, one of the shrewdest financiers of his day. I have twice, probably three times, as much as you."
She confronted him with a faintly sparkling resentment. However, the pleasure, the reassurance, in what he had just heard made him indifferent to the rest. It was impossible now to comprehend how he had been such a block! He even smiled at her, which, he was delighted to observe, obviously puzzled her.
"Perhaps I ought to tell you, Jason, and perhaps it is too late already, that I thought I married you because I was lonely, because I feared the future. Anyhow, that's what I told myself the night I sent for you. You might have a right to complain very bitterly about it."
"If I have, I won't," he assured her cheerfully.
"I thought that then; but now I am not at all sure. It no longer seems so simple, so easily explained. I used to feel that I understood myself very thoroughly, I could look inside and see what was there; but in the last month I haven't been able to; and it is very disturbing."