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“The old ghosts,” Prodmore promptly replied, “are worth so much a dozen, and with the price rather raised for the quantity taken!” Then, softening, “Look about you a little more. Do make yourself at home.”
“Thank you, Mr. Prodmore. May I light a cigarette?”
“In your own house, Captain?”
“That’s just the question: it seems so much less my own house than before I had come into it!” Both men lit up. “As I understand you, you lump your two conditions? I must accept both or neither?”
Prodmore threw back his shoulders. “You will accept both, for by doing so you’ll clear the property at a stroke. See?—if you stand for Gossage, you’ll get returned for Gossage.”
“And if I get returned for Gossage, I shall marry your daughter.”
“I’ll burn up every scratch of your pen—a bonfire of signatures! There won’t be a penny to pay—only a position to take. You’ll take it with peculiar grace.”
Yule completed the picture. “You’ll settle down here in comfort and honour.”
Prodmore watched his irritation as if it were a working charm. “Are you very sure of the ‘honour’ if I turn my political coat?”
“You’ll only be turning it back to the way it was always worn. Gossage will receive you with open arms. Stand in the good old interest and you’ll stand like a lion.”
“I fear you mean I must first roar like one.”
“Oh, I’ll do the roaring! Leave that to me.”
“Then why the deuce don’t you stand yourself?”
Prodmore knew familiarly why. “Because I’m not a remarkably handsome young man with the grand old home and the right old name. But if I haven’t these advantages, you’ll do justice to my natural desire that my daughter shall have them.”
Yule smoked a minute. “Doing justice to natural desires is what I’ve lately tried to make a study of. But I don’t grasp the deep attraction you discover in so large a surrender of your interests.”
“My surrenders are my own affair. You come high, but when I look at you I recognise one of those cases in which one must put down one’s money. I intend you shall be, Captain, the true comfort of my life!”
Yule was hushed. “May I inquire if Miss Prodmore’s ideas of comfort are as well defined—and as touchingly modest—as her father’s? Is she a responsible party of this ingenious arrangement?”
Prodmore appreciated the scruple. “Miss Prodmore may be best described as a large smooth sheet of blank, though gilt-edged, paper. No image of any tie but the true and perfect filial has yet formed itself on the considerable expanse. But for that image to be projected—”
“I’ve only, in person, to appear?” Yule laughed, embarrassed.
“Do you remember what you said when I first laid the matter before you in London?”
“I think I said it struck me I should first take a look at—what do you call it?—the corpus delicti.”
“I was eager for that, and I’m quite ready to hear you say you should first see the young lady.”
“There is something in that, since you mention it!”
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