The young man, meanwhile, had approached in surprise. “He’s gone? I’ve been looking for him!”
Mrs. Gracedew was out of breath; there was a disturbed whiteness of bosom in her which needed time to subside and which she might have appeared to retreat before him on purpose to veil. “I don’t think, you know, that you need him—now.”
Clement Yule was mystified. “Now?”
She recovered herself enough to explain—made an effort at least to be plausible. “I mean that—if you don’t mind—you must deal with me. I’ve arranged with Mr. Prodmore to take it over.”
Oh, he gave her no help! “Take what over?”
She looked all about as if not quite thinking what it could be called; at last, however, she offered with a smile a sort of substitute for a name. “Why, your debt.”
But he was only the more bewildered. “Can you—without arranging with me?”
She turned it round, but as if merely to oblige him. “That’s precisely what I want to do.” Then, more brightly, as she thought further: “That is, I mean, I want you to arrange with me. Surely you will,” she said encouragingly.
His own processes, in spite of a marked earnestness, were much less rapid. “But if I arrange with anybody——”
“Yes?” She cheerfully waited.