“Find what?” They looked at each other hard.
“Why, that she won’t have it.”
Oh, Mr. Prodmore now sprang up. “She will!”
“She won’t!” Mrs. Gracedew more distinctly repeated.
“She shall!” returned her adversary, making for the staircase with the evident sense of where reinforcement might be most required.
Mrs. Gracedew, however, with a spring, was well before him. “She shan’t!” She spoke with positive passion and practically so barred the way that he stood arrested and bewildered, and they faced each other, for a flash, like enemies. But it all went out, on her part, in a flash too—in a sudden wonderful smile. “Now tell me how much!”
Mr. Prodmore continued to glare—the sweat was on his brow. But while he slowly wiped it with a pocket-handkerchief of splendid scarlet silk, he remained so silent that he would have had for a spectator the effect of meeting in a manner her question. More formally to answer it he had at last to turn away. “How can I tell you anything so preposterous?”
She was all ready to inform him. “Simply by computing the total amount to which, for your benefit, this unhappy estate is burdened.” He listened with his back presented, but that appeared to strike her, as she fixed this expanse, as an encouragement to proceed. “If I’ve troubled you by showing you that your speculation is built on the sand, let me atone for it by my eagerness to take off your hands an investment from which you derive so little profit.”
He at last gave her his attention, but quite as if there were nothing in it. “And pray what profit will you derive——?”
“Ah, that’s my own secret!” She would show him as well no glimpse of it—her laugh but rattled the box. “I want this house!”