“When she arrived?” Mr. Prodmore rose like outraged Neptune. “That’s why she was so late?”
Mrs. Gracedew assented. “Why I got here first. I get everywhere first!” she bravely laughed.
Mr. Prodmore looked round him in purple dismay—it was so clearly a question for him where he should get, and what! “In which direction did they go?” he imperiously asked.
His rudeness was too evident to be more than lightly recognised. “I think I must let you ascertain for yourself!”
All he could do then was to shout it to Chivers. “Call my carriage, you ass!” After which, as the old man melted into the vestibule, he dashed about blindly for his hat, pounced upon it and seemed, furious but helpless, on the point of hurling it at his contradictress as a gage of battle. “So you abetted and protected this wicked, low intrigue?”
She had something in her face now that was indifferent to any violence. “You’re too disappointed to see your real interest: oughtn’t I therefore in common charity to point it out to you?”
He faced her question so far as to treat it as one. “What do you know of my disappointment?”
There was something in his very harshness that even helped her, for it added at this moment to her sense of making out in his narrowed glare a couple of tears of rage. “I know everything.”
“What do you know of my real interest?” he went on as if he had not heard her.
“I know enough for my purpose—which is to offer you a handsome condition. I think it’s not I who have protected the happy understanding that you call by so ugly a name; it’s the happy understanding that has put me”—she gained confidence—“well, in a position. Do drive after them, if you like—but catch up with them only to forgive them. If you’ll do that, I’ll pay your price.”