Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to entertain it. “I see. _Will_ he change?”
Cora’s consideration of it went even further. “_Has_ he changed?”
It went--and the effect was odd--a little too far for her companion, in whom, just discernibly, it had touched the spring of impatience. “My dear child, how in the world should _I_ know?”
But Cora knew exactly how anyone would know. “He hasn’t seemed to care enough for the house. _Does_ he care?”
Mrs. Gracedew moved away, passed over to the fireplace, and stood a moment looking at the old armorial fire-back she had praised to its master--yet not, it must be added, as if she particularly saw it. Then as she faced about: “You had better ask him!”
They stood thus confronted, with the fine old interval between them, and the girl’s air was for a moment that of considering such a course. “If he does care,” she said at last, “he’ll propose.”
Mrs. Gracedew, from where she stood in relation to the stairs, saw at this point the subject of their colloquy restored to view: Captain Yule was just upon them--he had turned the upper landing. The sight of him forced from her in a flash an ejaculation that she tried, however, to keep private--“He does care!” She passed swiftly, before he reached them, back to the girl and, in a quick whisper, but with full conviction, let her have it: “He’ll propose!”
Her movement had made her friend aware, and the young man, hurrying down, was now in the hall. Cora, at his hurry, looked dismay--“Then I fly!” With which, casting about for a direction, she reached the door to the court.
Captain Yule, however, at this result of his return, expressed instant regret. “I drive Miss Prodmore away!”
Mrs. Gracedew, more quickly still, eased off the situation. “It’s all right!” She had embraced both parties with a smile, but it was most liberal now for Cora. “Do you mind, one moment?”--it conveyed, unmistakeably, a full intelligence and a fine explanation. “I’ve something to say to Captain Yule.”
Cora stood in the doorway, robust against the garden-light, and looking from one to the other. “Yes--but I’ve also something more to say to _you_.”
“Do you mean now?” the young man asked.
It was the first time he had spoken to her, and her hesitation might have signified a maidenly flutter. “No--but before she goes.”
Mrs. Gracedew took it amiably up. “Come back, then; I’m not going.” And there was both dismissal and encouragement in the way that, as on the occasion of the girl’s former retreat, she blew her a familiar kiss. Cora, still with her face to them, waited just enough to show that she took it without a response; then, with a quick turn, dashed out, while Mrs. Gracedew looked at their visitor in vague surprise. “What’s the matter with her?”
She had turned away as soon as she spoke, moving as far from him as she had moved a few moments before from Cora. The silence that, as he watched her, followed her question would have been seen by a spectator to be a hard one for either to break. “I don’t know what’s the matter with her,” he said at last; “I’m afraid I only know what’s the matter with _me_. It will doubtless give you pleasure to learn,” he added, “that I’ve closed with Mr. Prodmore.”
It was a speech that, strangely enough, seemed but half to dissipate the hush. Mrs. Gracedew reached the great chimney again; again she stood there with her face averted; and when she finally replied it was in other words than he might have supposed himself naturally to inspire. “I thought you said he gave you time.”
“Yes; but you produced just now so deep an effect on me that I thought best not to take any.” He appeared to listen to a sound from above, and, for a moment, under this impulse, his eyes travelled about almost as if he were alone. Then he completed, with deliberation, his statement. “I came upon him right there, and I burnt my ships.”
Mrs. Gracedew continued not to meet his face. “You do what he requires?”
The young man was markedly, consciously caught. “I do what he requires. I felt the tremendous force of all you said to me.”
She turned round on him now, as if perhaps with a slight sharpness, the face of responsibility--even, it might be, of reproach. “So did I--or I shouldn’t have said it!”
It was doubtless this element of justification in her tone that drew from him a laugh a tiny trifle dry. “You’re perhaps not aware that you wield an influence of which it’s not too much to say----”
But he paused at the important point so long that she took him up. “To say what?”
“Well, that it’s practically irresistible!”
It sounded a little as if it had not been what he first meant; but it made her, none the less, still graver and just faintly ironical. “You’ve given me the most flattering proof of my influence that I’ve ever enjoyed in my life!”
He fixed her very hard, now distinctly so mystified that he could only wonder what different recall of her previous attitude she would have looked for. “This was inevitable, dear madam, from the moment you had converted me--and in about three minutes too!--into the absolute echo of your raptures.”
Nothing was, indeed, more extraordinary than her air of having suddenly forgotten them. “My ‘raptures’?”
He was amazed. “Why, about my home.”
He might look her through and through, but she had no eyes for himself, though she had now quitted the fireplace and finally recognised this allusion. “Oh, yes--your home!” From where had she come back to it? “It’s a nice tattered, battered old thing.” This account of it was the more shrunken that her observation, even as she spoke, freshly went the rounds. “It has defects of course”--with this renewed attention they appeared suddenly to strike her. They had popped out, conspicuous, and for a little it might have been a matter of conscience. However, her conscience dropped. “But it’s no use mentioning them now!”
They had half an hour earlier been vividly present to himself, but to see her thus oddly pulled up by them was to forget on the spot the ground he had taken. “I’m particularly sorry,” he returned with some spirit, “that you didn’t mention them before!”
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.