Part 61

It was like a splash in a full basin, but she launched the whole craft. “He walked with her from the station.”

“When she arrived?” Mr. Prodmore rose like outraged Neptune. “That’s why she was so late?”

Mrs. Gracedew assented. “Why I got here first. I get everywhere first!” she bravely laughed.

Mr. Prodmore looked round him in purple dismay--it was so clearly a question for him where he should get, and what! “In which direction did they go?” he imperiously asked.

His rudeness was too evident to be more than lightly recognised. “I think I must let you ascertain for yourself!”

All he could do then was to shout it to Chivers. “Call my carriage, you ass!” After which, as the old man melted into the vestibule, he dashed about blindly for his hat, pounced upon it and seemed, furious but helpless, on the point of hurling it at his contradictress as a gage of battle. “So you abetted and protected this wicked, low intrigue?”

She had something in her face now that was indifferent to any violence. “You’re too disappointed to see your real interest: oughtn’t I therefore in common charity to point it out to you?”

He faced her question so far as to treat it as one. “What do you know of my disappointment?”

There was something in his very harshness that even helped her, for it added at this moment to her sense of making out in his narrowed glare a couple of tears of rage. “I know everything.”

“What do you know of my real interest?” he went on as if he had not heard her.

“I know enough for my purpose--which is to offer you a handsome condition. I think it’s not I who have protected the happy understanding that you call by so ugly a name; it’s the happy understanding that has put me”--she gained confidence--“well, in a position. Do drive after them, if you like--but catch up with them only to forgive them. If you’ll do that, I’ll pay your price.”

The particular air with which, a minute after Mrs. Gracedew had spoken these words, Mr. Prodmore achieved a transfer of his attention to the inside of his hat--this special shade of majesty would have taxed the descriptive resources of the most accomplished reporter. It is none the less certain that he appeared for some time absorbed in that receptacle--appeared at last to breathe into it hard. “What do you call my price?”

“Why, the sum you just mentioned--fifty thousand!” Mrs. Gracedew feverishly quavered.

He looked at her as if stupefied. “That’s not my price--and it never for a moment was!” If derision can be dry, Mr. Prodmore’s was of the driest. “Besides,” he rang out, “my price is up!”

She caught it with a long wail. “Up?”

Oh, he let her have it now! “Seventy thousand.”

She turned away overwhelmed, but still with voice for her despair. “Oh, deary me!”

Mr. Prodmore was already at the door, from which he launched his ultimatum. “It’s to take or to leave!”

She would have had to leave it, perhaps, had not something happened at this moment to nerve her for the effort of staying him with a quick motion. Captain Yule had come into sight on the staircase and, after just faltering at what he himself saw, had marched resolutely enough down. She watched him arrive--watched him with an attention that visibly and responsively excited his own; after which she passed nearer to their companion. “Seventy thousand, then!”--it gleamed between them, in her muffled hiss, as if she had planted a dagger.

Mr. Prodmore, to do him justice, took his wound in front. “Seventy thousand--done!” And, without another look at Yule, he was presently heard to bang the outer door after him for a sign.

VIII

The young man, meanwhile, had approached in surprise. “He’s gone? I’ve been looking for him!”

Mrs. Gracedew was out of breath; there was a disturbed whiteness of bosom in her which needed time to subside and which she might have appeared to retreat before him on purpose to veil. “I don’t think, you know, that you need him--now.”

Clement Yule was mystified. “Now?”

She recovered herself enough to explain--made an effort at least to be plausible. “I mean that--if you don’t mind--you must deal with me. I’ve arranged with Mr. Prodmore to take it over.”

Oh, he gave her no help! “Take what over?”

She looked all about as if not quite thinking what it could be called; at last, however, she offered with a smile a sort of substitute for a name. “Why, your debt.”

But he was only the more bewildered. “Can you--without arranging with me?”