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He appeared, for a moment, to measure his possible use there; then, looking round him again: “I fear my work is nearer home. I hope to perform a part of that work in the next House of Commons. My electors have wanted me––”
“And you’ve wanted them,” she lucidly put in, “and that has been why you couldn’t come down.”
“Yes, for all this last time. And before that, from my childhood up, there was another reason.” He took a few steps away. “A family feud.”
She proved quite delighted with it. “Oh, I’m so glad—I hoped I’d strike a ‘feud’! That rounds it off, and spices it up, and just neatly completes the fracture!” Her reference to her going seemed to bring her back to propriety, and she glanced about once more for some wrap.
Yet a sound from the “party up” came down at that moment, and she took it so clearly as a call that she passed straight to the stairs. “Good-bye!”
The young man let her reach the foot, then spoke, anxiously, across the width of the hall. “I think I ‘feel’ it, you know; but it’s simply you—your presence—that make me. I’m afraid that in your absence––” He struck a match.
“In my absence?”
He lit his cigarette. “I may come back––”
“Come back?” she took him sharply up. “I should like to see you not!”
He smoked a moment. “I mean to my old idea––”
“Your old idea?”
He faced her over the width. “Well—that one could give it up.”
Her stare fairly filled the space. “Give up Covering? How in the world—or why?”
“Because I can’t afford to keep it.”
It brought her straight back. “Can’t you let it?”
“Let it to you?”
She gave a laugh. “I’d take it in a minute!”
Clement Yule remained grave. “I shouldn’t have the face to charge you a rent that would make it worth one’s while, and I think even you, dear lady—wouldn’t have the face to offer me one.” His voice just trembled as he risked that address. “My lovely inheritance is Dead Sea fruit. It’s mortgaged for all it’s worth and I haven’t the means to pay the interest. If by a miracle I could scrape the money together, it would leave me without a penny to live on. So if I find the old home at last—I lose it by the same luck!”
Mrs. Gracedew had hung upon his words, and waited, in visible horror, for something that would improve on them. “I never heard of anything so awful! Do you mean to say you can’t arrange––?”
“Oh, yes—an arrangement has been definitely proposed to me.”
“What’s the matter, then? For heaven’s sake, you poor thing, definitely accept it!”
He laughed, with little joy. “I’ve made up my mind in the last quarter of an hour that I can’t. It’s such a peculiar case.”
“More peculiar than mine?” she asked.
“Than yours?” Yule knew nothing about that.
Something in his tone seemed to pull her up. “I forgot—you don’t know mine. No matter. What is yours?”
He took a few steps. “Well, the fact that I’m asked to change. My attitude.”
“Is that all? You’re not a statue.”
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