“Am I not a member of your family?” she demanded. “Do you forget that I am your sister?”

“No: I’ve never been granted the opportunity to forget it. Oh, don’t fly off the hooks again — you can have no notion how bracket-faced you look when you get into one of your pelters! Console yourself with my assurance that if Buxted had left you purse-pinched I should have felt myself obliged to let you hang on my sleeve.” He looked mockingly down at her. “Yes, I know you’re about to tell me that you haven’t sixpence to scratch with, but the plain truth is that you are very well to do in the world, my dear Louisa, but the most unconscionable pinch-penny of my acquaintance! Now, don’t nauseate me by prating of affection! You’ve no more for me than I have for you.”

Considerably disconcerted by this direct attack, she stammered: “How can you say so? When I am sure I have always been most sincerely attached to you!”

“You deceive yourself, sister: not to me, but to my purse!”

“Oh, how can you be so unjust? And as for my being well to do in the world, I daresay that you, with your reckless extravagance, would be astonished to learn that I am obliged to exercise the strictest economy! Why, pray, do you imagine that I removed from our beautiful house in Albemarle Street when Buxted died, and came to live in this out-of-the-way place?”

He smiled. “Since there was not the least occasion for that removal, I can only suppose that it was from your incurable love of sconcing the reckoning.”

“If you mean that I was obliged to reduce my expenses — ”

“No, merely that you were unable to resist the temptation to do so.”

“With five children left on my hands — ” She broke off, warned by the quizzical look in his eye that it would be unwise to develop this theme.

“Just so!” he said sympathetically. “I think we had better part, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” said Lady Buxted, with suppressed passion, “I think you must be the most odious, unnatural creature that ever drew breath! No doubt if it had been Endymion who had applied to you you would have been all compliance!”