"And you most certainly are not."
"So he isn't likely to give any more for it than he can help."
"Of course not."
"Well, but—do you know what the library was valued at?"
Kitty did, and she would have blurted it out had not an inner voice told her to be discreet for once. He took her silence for a confession of ignorance.
"Would you think a thousand pounds an absurdly high valuation?"
"I don't know."
Kitty tried to banish all expression from her face. She really knew very little about business and was as yet unaware of the necessary publicity of bills of sale. The suspicion crossed her mind that Rickman, in his father's interests, might be trying to pump her as to the smallest sum that need be offered.
"Because," he added, "it isn't. Miss Harden stands to lose something like three thousand pounds by it."
Kitty's evil surmises vanished utterly. "Good Heavens!" she exclaimed, "how do you make that out?"