"What is it?" he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.
"Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?" she asked.
"In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him," he said. "In the concrete I tell him I haven't got a penny, as a rule."
"I see," said Lily; "but if you had, you would lend it him?"
"Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy."
"And if it is the wrong sort of person?" asked Lily.
"The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you."
Lily sighed, and pulled his hair gently, rather struck by his penetration, but not wishing to acknowledge it.
"All right; but why be personal? Who wants to borrow money from you, Lily?"
"I didn't say anyone did," she replied, throwing the note of her envelope into the grate. "Don't be inquisitive. I shall ask abstract questions if I like, and when I like, and how I like. Read the Screamer's speech with great care, and be ready by twelve. You are going to take me to the Old Masters."
She went out of the room, leaving Toby to his politics. But he did not at once pick up the paper again, but looked abstractedly into the fire. He did not at all like the thought that someone was borrowing money from his wife, for his brain involuntarily suggested to him the name of a possible borrower. Lily had held a note in her hand, he remembered, when she came into the room, and it was the envelope of it, no doubt, which she had thrown into the grate. For one moment he had a temptation to pick it up and see whether the handwriting confirmed his suspicions, the next he blushed hotly at the thought, and, picking up the crumpled fragment from the grate with the tongs, thrust it into the hottest core of the fire.
But the interruption had effectually destroyed his power of interesting himself in this world-wide combination against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger. There was trouble in the air; what trouble he did not know, but he had been conscious of it ever since he had gone down one day late in last December to stay with Kit and Jack at Goring, and they had been blocked by the snow a couple of stations up the line. He had noticed then, and ever since, that there was something wrong between Kit and his brother. Kit had been unwell when they were there: she had hardly appeared at all during those few days, except in the evenings. Then, it is true, she had usually eaten and drank freely, screamed with laughter, and played baccarat till the small hours grew sensibly larger. But underneath it all lay an obvious sense of effort and the thundery, oppressive feeling of trouble--something impossible to define, but impossible not to perceive. In a way, supposing it was Kit who wanted to borrow money from his wife, it would have been a relief to Toby; he would have been glad to know that cash alone was at the bottom of it all. He feared--he hardly knew what he feared--but something worse than a want of money.