Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial--she only presented her frank high colour. "I loved _you_. But I'm the worst!" she generously added. "And I'm solitary."
"Ah, so am I!" Mrs. Gracedew declared with gaiety, but with emphasis. "A _very_ queer thing always _is_ solitary! But, since we have that link, by all means confide."
"Well, I was met here by tremendous news." Cora produced it with a purple glow. "He wants me to marry him!"
Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as if she failed as yet to follow. "'He' wants you?"
Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. "Settled what?"
"Why, the whole question. That I must take him."
Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own scattered wits. "But, my dear, take _whom_?"
The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her powers. "Why, Captain Yule, who just went up."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. "Oh!" she repeated, looking straight away.
"I thought you would know," Cora gently explained.
Her friend's eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. "I didn't know." Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. "Has Captain Yule asked you?"
"No, but he _will_"--Cora was clear as a bell. "He'll do it to keep the house. It's mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it back."
Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it spread. "By marrying you?" she quavered.
Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the subject. "By giving me his name and his position. They're awfully great, and they're the price, don't you see?" she modestly mentioned. "_My_ price. Papa's price. Papa wants them."
Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. "But his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful politics!"
Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. "You _know_ about his dreadful politics? He's to change them," she recited, "to get _me_. And if he gets me----"
"He keeps the house?"--Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up.
Cora continued to show her schooling. "I go _with_ it--he's to have us both. But only," she admonishingly added, "if he changes. The question is--_will_ he change?"