Suppose
her prayer were to be answered? No; she couldn't ask it; she couldn't
risk it. And after all--she almost pointed this out to God--if she
spent her present nest-egg on a holiday she could quite soon accumulate
another. Frederick pressed money on her; and it would only mean, while
she rolled up a second egg, that for a time her contributions to the
parish charities would be less. And then it could be the next nest-egg
whose original corruption would be purged away by the use to which it
was finally put.
For Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had no money of her own, was obliged to
live on the proceeds of Frederick's activities, and her very nest-egg
was the fruit, posthumously ripened, of ancient sin. The way Frederick
made his living was one of the standing distresses of her life. He
wrote immensely popular memoirs, regularly, every year, of the
mistresses of kings. There were in history numerous kings who had had
mistresses, and there were still more numerous mistresses who had had
kings; so that he had been able to publish a book of memoirs during
each year of his married life, and even so there were greater further
piles of these ladies waiting to be dealt with. Mrs. Arbuthnot was
helpless. Whether she liked it or not, she was obliged to live on the
proceeds.
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