‘But you tell me that your patron will not part with it.’
‘I have not yet persuaded him to do so; but I by no means despair of it, and in the meantime I have a copy of it.’
‘My dear Samuel!’
‘At first I tried to commit it to memory, but found the task beyond my powers. It is a very long play.’
‘The longer the better,’ murmured the antiquary.
‘But not when one has to get it by heart,’ observed William Henry drily. His tone and manner were more in contrast to those of the elder man than ever; as one grew heated the other seemed to grow cooler and cooler. There was no question as to which of them, just at present, was likely to prove the better hand at a bargain.
‘But why do you talk thus, Samuel? The play, the play’s the thing; since you have it why do you not produce it? You cannot imagine that delay—indeed, that anything—can enhance the interest I feel in this most marvellous of our discoveries.’
William Henry’s face grew very grave.
‘It is true that whatever is mine is yours, in a sense,’ he said; ‘but still you must pardon me for remarking that they are my discoveries.’
Margaret started in her chair; if she had not felt William Henry’s grasp upon her wrist—for he had shifted his position and was confronting the antiquary face to face—she would have risen from it. She had never given her cousin credit for such self-assertion, and she trembled for its result. She did not even yet suspect it had a motive in which she herself was concerned; but the situation alarmed her. It was like that of some audacious clerk who demands of his master a partnership, with a certain difference that made it even graver.