Part 51

At this imputation of inconsequence, of a levity not, after all, without its excuse, Mrs. Gracedew was reduced, in keeping her resentment down, to an effort not quite successfully disguised. It was in a tone, nevertheless, all the more mild in intention that she reminded him of where he had equally failed. “If you had really gone over the house, as I almost went on my knees to you to do, you might have discovered some of them yourself!”

“How can you say that,” the young man asked with heat, “when I was precisely in the very act of it? It was just because I was that the first person I met above was Mr. Prodmore; on which, feeling that I must come to it sooner or later, I simply gave in to him on the spot--yielded him, to have it well over, the whole of his point.”

She listened to this account of the matter as she might have gazed, from afar, at some queer object that was scarce distinguishable. It left her a moment in the deepest thought, but she presently recovered her tone. “Let me then congratulate you on at last knowing what you want!”

But there were, after all, he instantly showed, no such great reasons for that. “I only know it so far as you know it! I struck while the iron was hot--or at any rate while the hammer was.”

“Of course I recognise”--she adopted his image with her restored gaiety--“that it can rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I blazed up, and I know that when I burn----”

She had pulled up with the foolish sense of this. “When you burn?”

“Well, I do it as Chicago does.”

He also could laugh out now. “Isn’t that usually down to the ground?”

Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light arms. “As high as the sky!” Then she came back, as with a scruple, to the real question. “I suppose you’ve still formalities to go through.”

“With Mr. Prodmore?” Well, he would suppose it too if she liked. “Oh, endless, tiresome ones, no doubt!”

This sketch of them made her wonder. “You mean they’ll take so very, very long?”

He seemed after all to know perfectly what he meant. “Every hour, every month, that I can possibly make them last!”

She was with him here, however, but to a certain point. “You mustn’t drag them out too much--must you? Won’t he think in that case you may want to retract?”

Yule apparently tried to focus Mr. Prodmore under this delusion, and with a success that had a quick, odd result. “I shouldn’t be so terribly upset by his mistake, you know, even if he did!”

His manner, with its slight bravado, left her proportionately shocked. “Oh, it would never do to give him any colour whatever for supposing you to have any doubt that, as one may say, you’ve pledged your honour.”

He devoted to this proposition more thought than its simplicity would have seemed to demand; but after a minute, at all events, his intelligence triumphed. “Of course not--not when I haven’t any doubt!”

Though his intelligence had triumphed, she still wished to show she was there to support it. “How can you possibly have any--any more than you can possibly have that one’s honour is everything in life?” And her charming eyes expressed to him her need to feel that he was quite at one with her on that point.

He could give her every assurance. “Oh, yes--everything in life!”

It did her much good, brought back the rest of her brightness. “Wasn’t it just of the question of the honour of things that we talked awhile ago--and of the difficulty of sometimes keeping our sense of it clear? There’s no more to be said therefore,” she went on with the faintest soft sigh about it, “except that I leave you to your ancient glory as I leave you to your strict duty.” She had these things there before her; they might have been a well-spread board from which she turned away fasting. “I hope you’ll do justice to dear old Covering in spite of its weak points, and I hope above all you’ll not be incommoded----”

As she hesitated here he was too intent. “Incommoded----?”

She saw it better than she could express it. “Well, by such a rage----!”

He challenged this description with a strange gleam. “You suppose it will be a rage?”

She laughed out at his look. “Are you afraid of the love that kills?”

He grew singularly grave. “Will it kill----?”

“Great passions have!”--she was highly amused.

But he could only stare. “Is it a great passion?”

“Surely--when so many feel it!”

He was fairly bewildered. “But how many----?”