“If I told you, Percival, we should only come back at the end to where we are now. Enough that I have found it out⁠—and the finding has caused that trouble and anxiety which made me so inaccessible to you all through today. Now, to refresh my memory about your affairs⁠—it is some time since I talked them over with you. The money has been raised, in the absence of your wife’s signature, by means of bills at three months⁠—raised at a cost that makes my poverty-stricken foreign hair stand on end to think of it! When the bills are due, is there really and truly no earthly way of paying them but by the help of your wife?”

“None.”

“What! You have no money at the bankers?”

“A few hundreds, when I want as many thousands.”

“Have you no other security to borrow upon?”

“Not a shred.”