“I thought you would know,” Cora gently explained.
Her friend’s eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. “I didn’t know.” Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. “Has Captain Yule asked you?”
“No, but he will”—Cora was clear as a bell. “He’ll do it to keep the house. It’s mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it back.”
Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it spread. “By marrying you?” she quavered.
Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the subject. “By giving me his name and his position. They’re awfully great, and they’re the price, don’t you see?” she modestly mentioned. “My price. Papa’s price. Papa wants them.”
Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. “But his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful politics!”
Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. “You know about his dreadful politics? He’s to change them,” she recited, “to get me. And if he gets me——”
“He keeps the house?”—Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up.
Cora continued to show her schooling. “I go with it—he’s to have us both. But only,” she admonishingly added, “if he changes. The question is—will he change?”
Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to entertain it. “I see. Will he change?”