Yet Clement Yule could in a fashion meet her. “Oh, it wouldn’t be depriving——!”
She altogether protested. “Not to turn you out——?”
“Dear lady, I’ve never been in!”
Oh, she was none the less downright. “You’re in now—I’ve put you, and you must stay.” He looked round so woefully, however, that she presently attenuated. “I don’t mean all the while, but long enough——!”
“Long enough for what?”
“And how long will that take?”
“Well, you think me very fast—but sometimes I’m slow. I told you just now, at any rate,” she went on, “that I had arranged you should lose nothing. Is the very next thing I do, then, to make you lose everything?”
“It isn’t a question of what I lose,” the young man anxiously cried; “it’s a question of what I do! What have I done to find it all so plain?” Fate was really—fate reversed, improved, and unnatural—too much for him, and his heated young face showed honest stupefaction. “I haven’t lifted a finger. It’s you who have done all.”
“Yes, but if you’re just where you were before, how in the world are you saved?” She put it to him with still superior lucidity.