There was quite a corresponding want, clearly, in the image presented to the Captain—of which, for a moment, he seemed with difficulty to follow the contour. “How do I arrange?”
“Well, we must think,” said Mrs. Gracedew; “we must wait.” She spoke as if this were a detail for which she had not yet had much attention; only bringing out, however, the next instant in an encouraging cry and as if it were by itself almost a solution: “We must find some way!” She might have been talking to a reasonable child.
But even reasonable children ask too many questions. “Yes—and what way can we find?” Clement Yule, glancing about him, was so struck with the absence of ways that he appeared to remember with something of regret how different it had been before. “With Prodmore it was simple enough. You see I could marry his daughter.”
Mrs. Gracedew was silent just long enough for her soft ironic smile to fill the cup of the pause. “Could you?”
It was as if he had tasted in the words the wine at the brim; for he gave, under the effect of them, a sudden headshake and an awkward laugh. “Well, never perhaps that exactly—when it came to the point. But I had to, you see——” It was difficult to say just what.
She took advantage of it, looking hard, but not seeing at all. “You had to——?”
“Well,” he repeated ruefully, “think a lot about it. You didn’t suspect that?”
Oh, if he came to suspicions she could only break off! “Don’t ask me too many questions.”
He looked an instant as if he wondered why. “But isn’t this just the moment for them?” He fronted her, with a quickness he tried to dissimulate, from the other side. “What did you suppose?”
She looked everywhere but into his face. “Why, I supposed you were in distress.”