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VIII
Clement Yule returns to the house, surprise twisting tight in his chest when he learns Mr. Prodmore has vanished without a trace. Mrs. Gracedew is flushed and breathless, the disturbed white of her bosom rising and falling as if she’s just run a hard, unplanned race, and she holds up a hand to stop him before he can voice his confusion, telling him he doesn’t need Prodmore anymore. Yule is mystified, and when she says he’ll need to deal with her now, he can’t follow: take what over? She smiles, offers a vague, playful substitute for a name, and says his debt. He’s even more bewildered—how can she assume that crushing burden without arranging it with him first? She turns his question playfully, says that’s exactly what she wants: for him to make all his new arrangements with her.
Yule’s thoughts move slower, earnest but tangled. If he sets terms with anyone, he asks, how does he fulfill the engagement he made to Prodmore? She laughs, bright and unburdened, and tells him he doesn’t have to perform that engagement at all. It takes him a full moment to process, then something like disbelieving relief leaps into his face: Prodmore is letting him off? She confirms it, ringing clear and triumphant, and for a second he soars—before dropping hard when the next thought lands: oh, he’s going to lose the house. She laughs that absurd fear off immediately, says he can arrange to keep it, with her.
He stares, trying to picture the impossible. With Prodmore, it had been so simple: marry Cora, and the debt, the house, the whole tangle of his troubles would be sorted. She gives him that soft, ironic smile he’s come to know, and asks if he really could have gone through with that marriage. He admits, awkward and rueful, that he’d never have been able to do it, not really—he’d just told himself he had to, felt a vague, unshakable delicacy about it. She says she didn’t know that back then, then adds, with a little spark of mischief, that Cora told her everything: Cora knew he couldn’t go through with it, and would have refused him anyway, so Prodmore had lied about his daughter’s willingness to the match.
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