Part 55

“Oh, he does that,” the girl hurried on, “far more than Captain Yule--I could see just with one glance that he doesn’t at all. Papa has of course seen the young man I mean, but we’ve been so sure papa would hate it that we’ve had to be awfully careful. He’s the son of the richest man at Bellborough, he’s Granny’s godson, and he’ll inherit his father’s business, which is simply immense. Oh, from the point of view of the things he’s in”--and Cora found herself sharp on this--“he’s quite as good as papa himself. He has been away for three days, and if he met me at the station, where, on his way back, he has to change, it was by the merest chance in the world. I wouldn’t love him,” she brilliantly wound up, “if he wasn’t nice.”

“A man’s always nice if you will love him!” Mrs. Gracedew laughed.

Her young friend more than met it. “He’s nicer still if he ‘will’ love you!”

But Mrs. Gracedew kept her head. “Nicer of course than if he won’t! But are you sure this gentleman does love you?”

“As sure as that the other one doesn’t.”

“Ah, but the other one doesn’t know you.”

“Yes, thank goodness--and never shall!”

Mrs. Gracedew watched her a little, but on the girl’s meeting her eyes turned away with a quick laugh. “You mean of course till it’s too late.”

“Altogether!” Cora spoke as with quite the measure of the time.

Mrs. Gracedew, revolving a moment in silence, appeared to accept her showing. “Then what’s the matter?” she impatiently asked.

“The matter?”

“Your father’s objection to the gentleman in the grotto.”

Cora now for the first time faltered. “His name.”

This for a moment pulled up her friend, in whom, however, relief seemed to contend with alarm. “Only his name?”

“Yes, but----” Cora’s eyes rolled.

Her companion invitingly laughed. “But it’s enough?”

Her roll confessingly fixed itself. “Not enough--that’s just the trouble!”

Mrs. Gracedew looked kindly curious. “What then is it?”

Cora faced the music. “Pegg.”

Mrs. Gracedew stared. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing to speak of.” The girl was quite candid now. “Hall.”

“Nothing before----?”

“Not a letter.”

“Hall Pegg?” Mrs. Gracedew had winced, but she quickly recovered herself, and, for a further articulation, appeared, from delicacy, to form the sound only with her mind. The sound she formed with her lips was, after an instant, simply “Oh!”

It was to the combination of the spoken and the unspoken that Cora desperately replied. “It sounds like a hat-rack!”

“‘Hall Pegg’? ‘Hall Pegg’?” Mrs. Gracedew now made it, like a questionable coin, ring upon the counter. But it lay there as lead and without, for a moment, her taking it up again. “How many has your father?” she inquired instead.

“How many names?” Miss Prodmore seemed dimly to see that there was no hope in that. “He somehow makes out five.”

“Oh, that’s too many!” Mrs. Gracedew jeeringly declared.