"You can imagine," she concluded—bearing it bravely with the resignation of martyrdom—"what a catastrophe that'll be to us."
"Poor Dolly; I never knew of that. I always thought the place was yours. You always said so."
"Yes; why not? With every right. It is ours—till he repurchases. You see he's beginning to nurse ambition now. I suppose there's no doubt that he'll come up to the top of the ladder. I always knew he'd make a splendid barrister if he once caught hold of the ambition. Now, of course, he'll find that the possession of Apsley's of value to him. He'll have to entertain. A Bohemian can't entertain any one but a Bohemian. Then, I suppose, he'll marry—get a house in Town like we have—and use Apsley, as we've done, for his friends."
"But, my dear Dolly—what on earth will you do?"
"Do?" Mrs. Durlacher rose with a sigh. "Well—there's prayer and fasting; but there'll be considerably more fasting than prayer, I should imagine. I assure you, I do pray that he doesn't make a fool of himself and marry some woman out of the bottomless pit of Bohemia."
"Well, I should think so. It 'ud be an awful pity, wouldn't it?"
"A considerable pity—yes. Here he is." She turned quickly to her friend, but her voice was cleverly pitched on a casual note. "Don't say anything to him about Apsley," she remarked. "He never admits to possession of it—that's one of his peculiarities. I don't suppose he will until he planks down his five thousand pounds. He has what he calls a legal sense of justice. Makes sure of a statement before he delivers it. You'll never catch him out. That's the Scotch blood on the mater's side of the family. I should think it's saved him out of many a difficulty."
Traill strode into the drawing-room as unconscious of the fate that Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly woven for him as is the unwieldy gull that, tumbling down the wind, strikes into the meshes of the fowler's net and finds itself enchained within the web. Coralie, herself, set to the task of winning him, was as unconscious of the subtly diaphonous mechanism of the trap as he. Yet she was versed well enough in human nature in her way. Innocence could not be laid at her door with the hope of finding it again. But it needs the long training of social strategy for any one to realize the cunning knowledge that things are not obtained in this world by asking for them, but by the hidden method of suggestion. That Mrs. Durlacher was in search of a suitable sister-in-law was obvious to the most untrained eye. It was no capable deduction on Coralie's part to have made certain of that. But she hesitated when she came to the wondering of whether she was considered suitable to fill that position herself. The hesitancy was of but little duration. The first time she had seen Traill, he had attracted her; now the attraction was increased a thousandfold. She had often stayed at Apsley Manor. Once her father had gone down for the shooting and had returned glowing with enthusiasm.
"Place I should like to have," he had grunted, "place I should like to have." And after dinner he sat over his port and amused himself with breaking the tenth commandment.
But there was no certainty in Coralie's mind that Mrs. Durlacher, with all her outward show of friendship, would consider her to be the eligible one. Yet here the chance offered. She determined to take it—hand open, ready for the gift.