Part 53

“Just when I’ve come back to you--at the risk,” Cora made bold to throw off, “of again interrupting, though I really hoped he had gone, your conversation with Captain Yule?”

But Mrs. Gracedew let the ball quite drop. “I’ve nothing to say to Captain Yule.”

Cora picked it up for another toss. “You had a good deal to say a few minutes ago!”

“Well, I’ve said it, and it’s over. I’ve nothing more to say at all,” Mrs. Gracedew insisted. But her announcement of departure left her on this occasion, as each of its predecessors had done, with a last, with indeed a fresh, solicitude. “What has become of my delightful ‘party’?”

“They’ve been dismissed, through the grounds, by the other door. But they mentioned,” the girl pursued, “the probable arrival of a fresh lot.”

Mrs. Gracedew showed on this such a revival of interest as fairly amounted to yearning. “Why, what times you have! You,” she nevertheless promptly decreed, “must take the fresh lot--since the house is now practically yours!”

Poor Cora looked blank. “Mine?”

Her companion matched her stare. “Why, if you’re going to marry Captain Yule.”

Cora coloured, in a flash, to the eyes. “I’m not going to marry Captain Yule!”

Her friend as quickly paled again. “Why on earth then did you tell me only ten minutes ago that you were?”

Cora could only look bewildered at the charge. “I told you nothing of the sort. I only told you”--she was almost indignantly positive--“that he had been ordered me!”

It sent Mrs. Gracedew off; she moved away to indulge an emotion that presently put on the form of extravagant mirth. “Like a dose of medicine or a course of baths?”

The girl’s gravity and lucidity sustained themselves. “As a remedy for the single life.” Oh, she had mastered the matter now! “But I won’t take him!”

“Ah, then, why didn’t you let me know?” Mrs. Gracedew panted.

“I was on the very point of it when he came in and interrupted us.” Cora clearly felt she might be wicked, but was at least not stupid. “It’s just to let you know that I’m here now.”

Ah, the difference it made! This difference, for Mrs. Gracedew, suddenly shimmered in all the place, and her companion’s fixed eyes caught in her face the reflection of it. “Excuse me--I misunderstood. I somehow took for granted----!” She stopped, a trifle awkwardly--suddenly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had inevitably seen it.

“You took for granted I’d jump at him? Well, you can take it for granted I won’t!”

Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it sympathetically. “You prefer the single life?”

“No--but I don’t prefer him!” Cora was crystal-bright.

Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first almost blinding; it took Mrs. Gracedew a moment to distinguish--which she then did, however, with immense eagerness. “You prefer someone else?” Cora’s promptitude dropped at this, and, starting to hear it, as you might well have seen, for the first time publicly phrased, she abruptly moved away. A minute’s sense of her scruple was enough for Mrs. Gracedew: this was proved by the tone of soft remonstrance and high benevolence with which that lady went on. She had looked very hard, first, at one of the old warriors hung on the old wall, and almost spoke as if he represented their host. “He seems remarkably clever.”

Cora, at something in the sound, quite jumped about. “Then why don’t you marry him yourself?”

Mrs. Gracedew gave a sort of happy sigh. “Well, I’ve got fifty reasons! I rather think one of them must be that he hasn’t happened to ask me.”

It was a speech, however, that her visitor could easily better. “I haven’t got fifty reasons, but I have got one.”

Mrs. Gracedew smiled as if it were indeed a stroke of wit. “You mean your case is one of those in which safety is not in numbers?” And then on Cora’s visibly not understanding: “It is when reasons are bad that one needs so many!”

The proposition was too general for the girl to embrace, but the simplicity of her answer was far from spoiling it. “My reason is awfully good.”

Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. “I see. An older friend.”

Cora listened as at a warning sound; yet she had by this time practically let herself go, and it took but Mrs. Gracedew’s extended encouraging hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the whole thing out. “I’ve been trying this hour, in my terrible need of advice, to tell you about him!” It came in a small clear torrent, a soft tumble-out of sincerity. “After we parted--you and I--at the station, he suddenly turned up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him which gave you time to get here before me and of which my father is in a state of ignorance that I don’t know whether to regard as desirable or dreadful.”

Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have been, for her face, the old family solicitor. “You want me then to inform your father?” It was a wonderful intonation.