Chapter Eight
She decided to stall him. The next time he came to see her, she made him sit down and tell her more about his life: his childhood, his life now – friends, pursuits, everything she could worm out of him.
“Are you rich, Arthur?” she said
He was taken aback by such a blunt question. “It depends on what you mean by rich.”
“Don’t avoid the question,” she said. “You know very well what I mean. What is your annual income? I could not marry a man unless I was in possession of such essential facts about him.”
He was silent for a moment. At length he spoke. “I suppose my disposable income, the money I have to spend, is about fifty thousand a year.”
Eleanor gasped. “That’s an absolute fortune!” she cried.
“Of course there are also the things I own. This house, all the farms on my
