He could give her every assurance. "Oh, yes--everything in life!"
It did her much good, brought back the rest of her brightness. "Wasn't it just of the question of the honour of things that we talked awhile ago--and of the difficulty of sometimes keeping our sense of it clear? There's no more to be said therefore," she went on with the faintest soft sigh about it, "except that I leave you to your ancient glory as I leave you to your strict duty." She had these things there before her; they might have been a well-spread board from which she turned away fasting. "I hope you'll do justice to dear old Covering in spite of its weak points, and I hope above all you'll not be incommoded----"
As she hesitated here he was too intent. "Incommoded----?"
She saw it better than she could express it. "Well, by such a rage----!"
He challenged this description with a strange gleam. "You suppose it will be a rage?"
She laughed out at his look. "Are you afraid of the love that kills?"
He grew singularly grave. "_Will_ it kill----?"
"Great passions _have_!"--she was highly amused.
But he could only stare. "Is it a great passion?"
He was fairly bewildered. "But how many----?"
She reckoned them up. "Let's see. If you count them all----"
She looked at him, in turn, slightly mystified. "I see. You knock off some. About half?"
It was too obscure--he broke down. "Whom on earth are you talking about?"
"I got the whole thing up--there are six thousand. It's such a fine figure!" said Mrs. Gracedew.
He had sharply passed from her, to cover his mistake, and it carried him half round the hall. Then, as if aware that this pause itself compromised him, he came back confusedly and with her last words in his ear. "_Has_ she a fine figure?"
He blushed and recovered himself. "Aren't we talking----"
"Of Gossage? Oh, yes--she has every charm! Good-bye," said Mrs. Gracedew.
He pulled, at this, the longest face, but was kept dumb a moment by the very decision with which she again began to gather herself. It held him helpless, and there was finally real despair in his retarded protest. "You don't mean to say you're going?"
"You don't mean to say you're surprised at it? Haven't I done," she luminously asked, "what I told you I had been so mystically moved to come for?" She recalled to him by her renewed supreme survey the limited character of this errand, which she then in a brisk familiar word expressed to the house itself. "You dear old thing--you're saved!"