Grace looked at her brother.
“If he should refuse?”
Val shook his head with a smile.
“Lady Wentworth likes a house with plenty of space at her disposal,” he said, dryly, “and grannie is only a tiresome old woman, who takes much too long to die.”
Grace had never heard her brother speak like this before. Her face grew a little sadder.
“What will be Mark’s future?” she said, wistfully. “I could not help thinking yesterday, Val, how much power lies in this woman’s hands. I believe she could make Mark into something better than he had ever been, and yet I am sure she will work in just the opposite direction. How right you were to mistrust her!”
“And how right you were,” Valentine said to this, “to urge me not to interfere in the matter when Mark’s determination was made. Had I never gone to Christina Pennington that bygone day, it is possible Christina Wentworth would have been our friend now instead of our enemy, Grace. It was a big mistake, and I was so clumsy, I made the mistake worse a hundred times than it need have been.”
He had Polly’s face before his eyes as he said this, and Polly’s little, frank utterance of how much she had hated him for his interference that day. It was wonderful what a softness came over his angry thoughts when he remembered Polly.
“Did Lady Wentworth tell you when her mother and sister were coming?” he asked.
Grace shook her head.