She had touched in himself even a sharper spring. “Do you mean to say,” he cried, “you want to buy that?” She stared at his queer emphasis, which was intensified by a queer grimace; then she turned from him with a change of colour and an ejaculation that led to nothing more, after a few seconds, than a somewhat conscious silence—a silence of which Mr. Prodmore made use to follow up his unanswered question with another. “Is your proposal that I should transfer my investment to you for the mere net amount of it your conception of a fair bargain?”
This second inquiry, however, she could, as she slowly came round, substantially meet. “Pray, then, what is yours?”
“Mine would be, not that I should simply get my money back, but that I should get the effective value of the house.”
Mrs. Gracedew considered it. “But isn’t the effective value of the house just what your money expresses?”
The lid of his hard left eye, the harder of the two, just dipped with the effect of a wink. “No, madam. It’s just what yours does. It’s moreover just what your lips have already expressed so distinctly!”
She clearly did her best to follow him. “To those people—when I showed the place off?”
Mr. Prodmore laughed. “You seemed to be taking bids then!”
She was candid, but earnest. “Taking them?”
“Oh, like an auctioneer! You ran it up high!” And Mr. Prodmore laughed again.
She turned a little pale, but it added to her brightness. “I certainly did, if saying it was charming——”