Part 49

“I wouldn’t give you time,” Mrs. Gracedew cried with force--“I’d give you a shaking! For God’s sake, at any rate”--and she really tried to push him off--“go upstairs!”

“And literally find the dreadful man?” This was so little his personal idea that, distinctly dodging her pressure, he had already reached the safe quarter.

But it befell that at the same moment she saw Cora reappear on the upper landing--a circumstance that promised her a still better conclusion. “He’s coming down!”

Cora, in spite of this announcement, came down boldly enough without him and made directly for Mrs. Gracedew, to whom her eyes had attached themselves with an undeviating glare. Her plain purpose of treating this lady as an isolated presence allowed their companion perfect freedom to consider her arrival with sharp alarm. His disconcerted stare seemed for a moment to balance; it wandered, gave a wild glance at the open door, then searched the ascent of the staircase, in which, apparently, it now found a coercion. “I’ll go up!” he gasped; and he took three steps at a time.

The girl threw herself, in her flushed eagerness, straight upon the wonderful lady. “I’ve come back to you--I want to speak to you!” The need had been a rapid growth, but it was clearly immense. “May I confide in you?”

Her instant overflow left Mrs. Gracedew both astonished and amused. “You too?” she laughed. “Why it is good we come over!”

“It is, indeed!” Cora gratefully echoed. “You were so very kind to me and seemed to think me so curious.”

The mirth of her friend redoubled. “Well, I loved you for it, and it was nothing moreover to what you thought me!”

Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial--she only presented her frank high colour. “I loved you. But I’m the worst!” she generously added. “And I’m solitary.”

“Ah, so am I!” Mrs. Gracedew declared with gaiety, but with emphasis. “A very queer thing always is solitary! But, since we have that link, by all means confide.”

“Well, I was met here by tremendous news.” Cora produced it with a purple glow. “He wants me to marry him!”

Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as if she failed as yet to follow. “‘He’ wants you?”

“Papa, of course. He has settled it!”

Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. “Settled what?”

“Why, the whole question. That I must take him.”

Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own scattered wits. “But, my dear, take whom?”

The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her powers. “Why, Captain Yule, who just went up.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. “Oh!” she repeated, looking straight away.

“I thought you would know,” Cora gently explained.

Her friend’s eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. “I didn’t know.” Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. “Has Captain Yule asked you?”

“No, but he will”--Cora was clear as a bell. “He’ll do it to keep the house. It’s mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it back.”

Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it spread. “By marrying you?” she quavered.

Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the subject. “By giving me his name and his position. They’re awfully great, and they’re the price, don’t you see?” she modestly mentioned. “My price. Papa’s price. Papa wants them.”

Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. “But his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful politics!”

Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. “You know about his dreadful politics? He’s to change them,” she recited, “to get me. And if he gets me----”

“He keeps the house?”--Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up.

Cora continued to show her schooling. “I go with it--he’s to have us both. But only,” she admonishingly added, “if he changes. The question is--will he change?”

Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to entertain it. “I see. Will he change?”