Page:The Author of Beltraffio, The Middle Years, Greville Fane, and Other Tales (London, Macmillan & Co., 1922).djvu/384

FORDHAM CASTLE familiar with. "I've stood in her light so long—her 'social' light, outside of which everything is for Sue black darkness—that I don't really see the reason she should ever want me back. That at any rate is what I'm doing—I'm just waiting. And I didn't expect the luck of being able to wait in your company. I couldn't suppose—that's the truth," he added—"that there was another, anywhere about, with the same ideas or the same strong character. It had never seemed to be possible," he ruminated, "that there could be any one like Mrs. Taker."

He was to remember afterwards how his companion had appeared to consider this approximation. "Another, you mean, like my Mattie?"

"Yes—like my Sue. Any one that really comes up to her. It will be," he declared, "the first one I've struck."

"Well," said Mrs. Vanderplank, "my Mattie's remarkably handsome."

"I'm sure—! But Mrs. Taker's remarkably handsome too. Oh," he added, both with humour and with earnestness, "if it wasn't for that I wouldn't trust her so! Because, for what she wants," he developed, "it's a great help to be fine-looking."

"Ah it's always a help for a lady!"—and Mrs. Magaw's sigh fluttered vaguely between the expert and the rueful. "But what is it," she asked, "that Mrs. Taker wants?"

"Well, she could tell you herself. I don't think she'd trust me to give an account of it. Still," he went on, "she has stated it more than once for my benefit, and perhaps that's what it all finally comes to. She wants to get where she truly belongs."

Mrs. Magaw had listened with interest. "That's just where Mattie wants to get! And she seems to know just where it is." 364