"Quite so. But I should disregard that if I were you. Anyhow you can think it over, and if you change your mind you can let me or Mr Rickman know before the sale."
Lucia looked down at him from her height. "I shall not change my mind. If I want to keep any of the books, I can buy them from Mr. Rickman."
She turned to Rickman in the doorway. "All the same, it was kind of you to think of it." She said it very distinctly, so that Mr. Pilkington could hear.
Rickman followed her out of the room and closed the door behind them. She turned on him eyes positively luminous with trust. It was as if she had abandoned the leading of her intellect and flung the reins on the neck of her intuition.
"I was right, wasn't I? I would so much rather buy them back from you."
"From my father?"
"It's the same thing, isn't it?"
He smiled sadly. "I'm afraid it isn't, quite. Why didn't you accept his offer?"
"I couldn't." She shuddered slightly. Her face expressed her deep and desperate repugnance. "I can buy them back from you. He is really arranging with your father, isn't he?"
"Yes." It was the third time that she had appealed from Pilkington to him, and there was a profound humiliation in the thought that at this precise moment the loathsome Dicky might be of more solid use to her than he.