Verelst, adjusting his glasses, said, and distantly enough: "What now?
No, what next?"
Mrs. Austen sat down. "Peter, if you ever loved me, don't adopt that
tone."
"It is not the tone, it is the tune and the tune is yours."
"Tune? What tune? What on earth are you talking about?"
"The tune to which the dinner was set. I heard it. Margaret heard it. It
knocked her out."
She raised her eyes to him, made them pathetic. "Peter, I haven't a
penny."
"You have twenty thousand a year."
"Nineteen, not a dollar more, and that is genteel poverty and there's
nothing genteel in poverty now."