Free Away Went Love by Mary Burchell

great deal of money—and then he wouldn’t have had to feel that my money mattered at all. He didn’t like the idea, really, that we should be living on my money as well as his. He—he wanted to feel that he was keeping his wife on his own money.”
    “High-minded fellow,” murmured Errol Tamberly.
    “There’s no need for you to sneer about it!” Hope cried, all her anger flaring up again. “You’ve never been at your wits’ end for money, or wondered how you can possibly manage something on which your happiness depends. I’m not defending what Richard has done. I’m at least as much shocked as you and a great deal more m-miserable about it. But it’s easy to be shocked because someone yields to a temptation you’ve never had to face yourself. I’m t-trying to put myself in his place and—and understand why he did it. I don’t know why I ever thought it would be any good coming to you. I might have known you’d sneer and laugh. I wish—I wish I hadn’t hu-humiliated myself for nothing.” And groping rather unsuccessfully for her handkerchief, Hope stumbled to her feet again.
    “No—wait a moment. Sit down again. We haven’t finished this.” Imperturbably he handed her his own handkerchief across the desk, and after a further unsuccessful search for her own, she accepted it. Having dried her eyes, she felt tempted to fling it down on the desk again and walk out of the room, but as she looked at him over the crumpled handkerchief, she saw, to her incredulous astonishment, that he had drawn out a cheque-book and was writing in it. It was difficult to read upside down what he was writing, but at least she saw that the amount had two noughts on the end.
    Slowly, and in slightly awe-stricken silence, Hope sat down once more.
    He completed the writing of the cheque, blotted it rather deliberately and tore it from the book. Then he looked across at her.
    “Better?”
    “Oh, yes, thank you.” She felt a good deal ashamed of herself.
    “All right. I’ve made out a cheque to you here for five hundred pounds, which you are quite at liberty to pay over to young Fander on the conditions I named, but—”
    “I’ve told you they’re impossible terms! It’s cruel of you to prolong the argument and—and actually write the cheque!”
    “Wait a moment. There is one other set of circumstances in which you may pay over the money without conditions.”
    “Yes?” She hardly dared to draw breath in the eagerness with which she awaited his next words.
    “If you’re right about Richard Fander, Hope, and he does want to marry you, with or without money, then I’m willing to admit that I’ve done him an injustice,” Tamberly said slowly. “If he’s not an unprincipled young adventurer, but merely a man who was very much tempted and made a bad slip, I see no reason why I shouldn’t help him —but I want some proof of that.”
    “But—what proof can I possibly give you?”
    “Your contention is that he wants to marry you, rich or poor?”
    “Yes.”
    “And that all he requires is this five hundred, in order to get out of his present scrape, and then he will start a happy married life with you, regardless of the fact that you’ll both be much poorer than he ever expected?”
    “Yes.” Against her will, she looked down at that point, instead of looking him in the face.
    “Well, my dear, if, after handing him over the five hundred pounds, you can make him say that he wants to make arrangements for the wedding at once, I’ll agree your contention was correct, and be willing that my money should go to help on a perfectly desirable marriage which has all the elements of success about it.”
    “You—you mean that, if Richard really wants to marry me, we can have the five hundred pounds without any conditions being imposed?”
    “You can.”
    “But—I don’t see—where the catch is.”
    He laughed and flushed slightly.
    “Confound it! I don’t want to put a ‘catch’ in it, just for the sake of