Mrs. Gracedew was all concentration. “‘Him’? Mr. Pegg?”
“No--he naturally _has_ to accept it. But papa.”
She looked harder still at this greater feat, then seemed to see light. “Well, it will be difficult--but I will.”
Doubt paled before it. “Oh, you heavenly thing!”
Mrs. Gracedew after an instant, sustained by this appreciation, went a step further. “And I’ll make him _say_ he does!”
Cora closed her eyes with the dream of it. “Oh, if I could only hear him!”
Her benefactress had at last run it to earth. “It will be enough if _I_ do.”
Cora quickly considered; then, with prompt accommodation, gave the comfortable measure of her faith. “Yes--I think it will.” She was quite ready to retire. “I’ll give you time.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Gracedew; “but before you give me time give me something better.”
This pulled the girl up a little, as if in parting with her secret she had parted with her all. “Something better?”
“If I help you, you know,” Mrs. Gracedew explained, “you must help me.”
“But how?”
“By a clear assurance.” The charming woman’s fine face now gave the real example of clearness. “That if Captain Yule should propose to you, you would unconditionally refuse him.”
Cora flushed with the surprise of its being only that. “With my dying breath!”
Mrs. Gracedew scanned her robust vitality. “Will you make it even a promise?”
The girl looked about her in solid certainty. “Do you want me to sign----?”
Mrs. Gracedew was quick. “No, don’t sign!”
Yet Cora was so ready to oblige. “Then what shall I do?”
Mrs. Gracedew turned away, but after a few vague steps faced her again. “Kiss me.”
Cora flew to her arms, and the compact had scarce been sealed before the younger of the parties was already at the passage to the front. “We meet of course at the station.”
Mrs. Gracedew thought. “If all goes well. But where shall you be meanwhile?”
Her confederate had no need to think. “Can’t you guess?”
The bang of the house-door, the next minute, so helped the answer to the riddle as fairly to force it, when she found herself alone, from her lips. “At that funny old grotto? Well,” she sighed, “I _like_ funny old grottos!” She found herself alone, however, only for a minute; Mr. Prodmore’s formidable presence had darkened the door from the court.
VII
“My daughter’s not here?” he demanded from the threshold.
“Your daughter’s not here.” She had rapidly got under arms. “But it’s a convenience to me, Mr. Prodmore, that _you_ are, for I’ve something very particular to ask you.”
Her interlocutor crossed straight to the morning-room. “I shall be delighted to answer your question, but I must first put my hand on Miss Prodmore.” This hand the next instant stayed itself on the latch, and he appealed to the amiable visitor. “Unless indeed she’s occupied in there with Captain Yule?”
The amiable visitor met the appeal. “I don’t think she’s occupied--anywhere--with Captain Yule.”
Mr. Prodmore came straight away from the door. “Then where the deuce _is_ Captain Yule?”
The amiable visitor turned a trifle less direct. “His absence, for which I’m responsible, is just what renders the inquiry I speak of to you possible.” She had already assumed a most inquiring air, yet it was soon clear that she needed every advantage her manner could give her. “What will you take----? what will you take----?”
It had the sound, as she faltered, of a general question, and Mr. Prodmore raised his eyebrows. “Take? Nothing, thank you--I’ve just had a cup of tea.” Then suddenly, as if on the broad hint: “Won’t _you_ have one?”
“Yes, with pleasure--but not yet.” She looked about her again; she was now at close quarters and, concentrated, anxious, pressed her hand a moment to her brow.
This struck her companion. “Don’t you think you’d be better for it immediately?”
“No.” She was positive. “No.” Her eyes consciously wandered. “I want to know how you’d value----”
He took her, as his own followed them, more quickly up, expanding in the presence of such a tribute from a real connoisseur. “One of these charming old things that take your fancy?”
She looked at him straight now. “They _all_ take my fancy!”
“All?” He enjoyed it as the joke of a rich person--the kind of joke he sometimes made himself.
“Every single one!” said Mrs. Gracedew. Then with still a finer shade of the familiar: “Should you be willing to treat, Mr. Prodmore, for your interest in this property?”
He threw back his head: she had scattered over the word “interest” such a friendly, faded colour. She was either _not_ joking or was rich indeed; and there was a place always kept in his conversation for the arrival of money, as there is always a box in a well-appointed theatre for that of royalty. “Am I to take it from you then that you _know_ about my interest----?”
“Everything!” said Mrs. Gracedew with a world of wit.
“Excuse me, madam!”--he himself was now more reserved. “You don’t know everything if you don’t know that my interest--considerable as it might well have struck you--has just ceased to exist. I’ve given it up”--Mr. Prodmore softened the blow--“for a handsome equivalent.”
The blow fell indeed light enough. “You mean for a handsome son-in-law?”
“It will be by some such description as the term you use that I shall doubtless, in the future, permit myself, in the common course, to allude to Captain Yule. Unless indeed I call him----” But Mr. Prodmore dropped the bolder thought. “It will depend on what he calls _me_.”
Mrs. Gracedew covered him a moment with the largeness of her charity. “Won’t it depend a little on what your daughter herself calls him?”
Mr. Prodmore seriously considered. “No. That,” he declared with delicacy, “will be between the happy pair.”
“Am I to take it from you then--I adopt your excellent phrase,” Mrs. Gracedew said--“that Miss Prodmore has already accepted him?”
Her companion, with his head still in the air, seemed to signify that he simply put it down on the table and that she could take it or not as she liked. “Her character--formed by my assiduous care--enables me to locate her, I may say even to _time_ her, from moment to moment.” His massive watch, as he opened it, further sustained him in this process. “It’s my assured conviction that she’s accepting him while we stand here.”
Mrs. Gracedew was so affected by his assured conviction that, with an odd, inarticulate sound, she forbore to stand longer--she rapidly moved away, taking one of the brief excursions of step and sense that had been for her, from the first, under the noble roof, so many dumb but decisive communions. But it was soon over, and she floated back on a wave that showed her to be, since she had let herself go, by this time quite in the swing and describing a considerable curve. “Dear Mr. Prodmore, why are you so imprudent as to make your daughter afraid of you? You should have taught her to confide in you. She has clearly shown me,” she almost soothingly pursued, “that she _can_ confide.”
Mr. Prodmore, however, suddenly starting, looked far from soothed. “She confides in _you_?”
“You may take it from me!” Mrs. Gracedew laughed. “Let me suggest that, as fortune has thrown us together a minute, you follow her good example.” She put out a reassuring hand--she could perfectly show him the way. “Tell me, for instance, the ground of your objection to poor Mr. Pegg. I mean Mr. Pegg of Bellborough, Mr. Hall Pegg, the godson of your daughter’s grandmother and the associate of his father in their flourishing house; to whom (as _he_ is to _it_ and to _her_) Miss Prodmore’s devotedly attached.”
Mr. Prodmore had in the course of this speech availed himself of the support of the nearest chair, where, in spite of his subsidence, he appeared in his amazement twice his natural size. “It has gone so far as _that_?”
She rose before him as if in triumph. “It has gone so far that you had better let it go the rest of the way!”
He had lost breath, but he had positively gained dignity. “It’s too monstrous, to have plotted to keep me in the dark!”
“Why, it’s only when you’re kept in the dark that your daughter’s kept in the light!” She argued it with a candour that might have served for brilliancy. “It’s at her own earnest request that I plead to you for her liberty of choice. She’s an honest girl--perhaps even a peculiar girl; and she’s not a baby. You over-do, I think, the nursing. She has a perfect right to her preference.”
Poor Mr. Prodmore couldn’t help taking it from her, and, this being the case, he still took it in the most convenient way. “And pray haven’t I a perfect right to mine?” he asked from his chair.
She fairly seemed to serve it up to him--to put down the dish with a flourish. “Not at her expense. You expect her to give up too much.”
“And what has she,” he appealed, “expected _me_ to give up? What but the desire of my heart and the dream of my life? Captain Yule announced to me but a few minutes since his intention to offer her his hand.”
She faced him on it as over the table. “Well, if he does, I think he’ll simply find----”
“Find what?” They looked at each other hard.
“Why, that she won’t have it.”
Oh, Mr. Prodmore now sprang up. “She _will_!”