"To grant you what?"
"The finding of you in a gentler mind."
The faintest flicker of a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her [tapered] fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her feet; then she resumes it again, with a face calm and emotionless as usual.
"Old Browne's girl can't owe her father much," Desmond is saying apropos of something both lost and gone before, so far as Kelly and Mrs. Herrick are concerned.
"About a hundred thousand pounds," says Ronayne. "She is quite a catch, you know. No end of money. The old fellow died a year ago."
"No, he didn't; he demised," says Kelly, emerging from obscurity into the light of conversation once more. "At least, so the papers said. There is a tremendous difference, you know. A poor man dies, a rich man demises. One should always bear in mind that important social distinction."
"And the good man! What of him?" [says] Desmond, looking at his friend. "What does Montgomery say?"
"Yes, that is very mysterious," says Kelly, with bated breath. "According to Montgomery, 'the good man never dies.' Think of that! Never dies. He walks the earth forever, like a [superannuated] ghost, only awfuller."
"Have you ever seen one?" asks Olga, leaning forward.
"What? a man that never died? Yes, lots of 'em. Here's one," laying his hand upon his breast.