“What did I tell you?” said Mr. Burnett. “Why _will_ you jeopardise your position in this manner. It isn’t as if you were not well-off.”
Miss Verinder demurely replied that, although originally well-off, her expenses had increased, and for certain reasons she would be pleased to add to her income.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried Mr. Burnett, almost writhing in his altruistic despair. “How often have I heard people like you say exactly what you have just said! In this very room, Miss Verinder--clients who really ought to know better”; and he gave her a severe little lecture on her recent speech, which, he said, was absolutely typical in the foolishness of its underlying ideas. Widows and spinsters, living out of the world, knowing nothing of business, with no man to control them, invariably talk in that silly manner before they fall into the most frightful pitfalls.
But this incorrigible spinster went on with her bad practices, buying this and that queer thing, and once, to the astonishment and annoyance of Mr. Burnett, securing a little profit. That made her worse than ever, and she soon went right down all among the pitfalls.
“Now what do you intend?” said the stockbroker, speaking very gravely of the catastrophe. “Are you going on, or are you going to stop?”
“I scarcely know how to answer,” said Emmie, after a silence. “I have dropped so much that it almost seems as if I couldn’t _afford_ to stop.”
Mr. Burnett writhed despairingly. Then nodding his head, and pointed his finger at her, he said, “Miss Verinder, may I tell you a story?”
“Oh, please do,” said Emmie. “I should be so glad if you would.”
“A client of ours was bitten with this mania--for mania it is; although, mind you, there was more excuse for her, because it was in peace-time, and not when the whole world has gone upside down and from day to day one cannot make the wildest guess as to what the value of anything will be to-morrow. She was not only a client but a relative--my own cousin--Adela Burnett--so I knew all her circumstances. She too was an old--Suffice it to say that she was the unmarried daughter of my uncle John, who had left her quite a good little property. Really a jolly little place in Sussex--perhaps three hundred acres, not more--and I don’t know how many feet above the sea--_The Mount_, they called it--not that the name matters. But there she was--don’t you see?--surrounded with comfort--quite able to play the lady bountiful in a small way--respected by everybody. The first doubtful order she brought to me--the very first, Miss Verinder”--and he shook his finger impressively--“I said, ‘Adela, stop it.’ But did she listen to me? No. It was nothing to her that my firm is one of the oldest in the City of London and that her own cousin is its senior partner. She would sooner act on the advice of the local doctor, or the curate, or the wife of the master of hounds, than listen to anything our firm could tell her. Well, I warned her for the second time. And what do you think she did? What, Miss Verinder, do you think she did?”