“Are you struck, Israel?”
“All of a heap.” I always adopted a fresh, breezy way of talking with Grahame. I think that is why he believes in my innocence to this day, and also why he is suffering so much. He never saw the corners of my character, although he had known me so many years. I always appeared to him frank and affectionate.
“She’ll suit you better than Sibella would have done.”
Had I been without the ambitions I was possessed of, Miss Gascoyne would have done nothing of the kind. Sibella’s decadent temperament would have furnished me with far more entertainment. But Edith Gascoyne was on the road to my objective. She was the most natural mistress in the world for Hammerton Castle.
“It’s all rot my thinking of such a thing,” I said, true to the character in which I instinctively appeared before Grahame. “She’s got money of her own, and I’m a beggarly stockbroker’s clerk with three hundred and fifty a year.”
“Judging by Mr. Gascoyne’s manner, I should say he meant you to be a little more than that one of these days.”
“Oh, I’m not such a hypocrite as to pretend that it doesn’t look as if he meant to do something for me, but I may have ever so long to wait till then.”
“Don’t you make any money on your own account?”
“Oh, a bit—nothing to speak of.”
Grahame must have mentioned Miss Gascoyne to Sibella, because the next time I called she asked me why I had never spoken of her.