Free The Brading Collection by Patricia Wentworth

to carry off lines of the unhand-me-villain type.”
    Her mouth twitched, a dimple appeared. She broke into angry laughter.
    Charles said, “That’s better. It’s always a pity to miscast yourself. And you might, you know, without me at hand to warn, to threaten, and command. You’ll have to watch yourself.”
    “Really, Charles!”
    “Definitely, my sweet. The—we won’t call it alimony if you’d rather not—allowance sounds much less divorce court, doesn’t it? It will be paid into your account quarterly.”
    “No, it won’t! I’m not joking, and I can’t possibly take it!”
    Charles was sitting up hugging his knees. He said with a note of reproof in his voice,
    “Quite right—you should never joke about money. I wouldn’t dream of it. Nor would you if you knew how many midnight forms I had to fill before they’d let me get down to converting Saltings into flats. All honest-to-Ministry-of-Health toil, involving enormous mental strain. You know, the people who make out government forms are really wasted in the back rooms of the Civil Service. They ought to be drawing much larger salaries making up cross-word puzzles, then they’d be applauded and admired instead of being damned into heaps every time anyone fills up a form.”
    Stacy’s dimple trembled in and out again.
    “But I’m not going to take it, Charles.”
    He released his knees and with a sudden movement reached forward and took her by the wrists.
    “Now you just listen to me!”
    “I can listen quite well without you holding me. Charles—that hurts!”
    “It was meant to. That money will be paid into your bank every quarter. You can go on the razzle-dazzle with it, or chuck it over Waterloo Bridge, or squander it on the undeserving poor, or you can leave it lying in the bank—I don’t care a damn. But you can’t stop me paying it in. I won’t have you exercise your pride at the expense of my peace of mind. If miniatures boom, a miserable three hundred can be properly despised. If the bottom drops out of painting—well, I’d like to feel you had a herring and a crust.”
    “Charles—let go!”
    He took his hands away at once, laughed, and said,
    “No bruises, darling. And now let’s talk about something else.”
    She shook her head.
    “I can’t stop your paying the money in—”
    “Too true.”
    “But I shan’t touch it.”
    “That’s your affair. Let us abandon it and talk about me. Does it interest you at all to hear that I’m within measurable distance of being disinherited?”
    “How—”
    “Oh, not Saltings—that’s round my neck for life. It’s my Great Expectations. I believe Lewis to be contemplating matrimony.”
    “At his age!”
    “Well, he’s only about fifty-five, you know, and he’s never been quite such a dried-up stick as he looks. He was engaged to Dossie Dale somewhere about twenty years ago. I’m told they split when he discovered that her Dossie should have been spelt with a B. One of the upper-hand-or-die brigade. Then of course there was his affair with Myra Constantine. Don’t tell me you’ve been there nearly twenty-four hours and she hasn’t told you all about it. He made strictly dishonourable proposals and suggested an unofficial honeymoon in Paris. She told him she was well over fifty, and if he was ten years younger, he was plenty old enough to know a respectable woman when he saw one. After which I believe he went the length of asking her to marry him, and she burst out laughing and said if she’d been going to marry again she could have done it twenty times a year for the past thirty years or so. They stayed good friends, and that’s a feather in Myra’s cap. Lewis is the sort that might bear malice, but she didn’t let him.”
    “And who is he proposing to now?”
    “You saw that red-haired girl last night?”
    “Of course I saw her. You don’t mean to say—”
    He nodded.
    “Her name is Maida Robinson. Her hair, as you have observed, is red. She has a very