Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/149

THE IVORY TOWER This was tremendously much again to take in, but Gray's capacity grew. "Promising him, you mean, for his benefit, that my uncle shan't last?"

The size of it on his lips might fairly, during the instant she looked at him, have been giving her pleasure. "Yes, making it a bribe to father's patience."

"Then why doesn't the bribe act?"

"Because it comes too late. It was amazing," she pursued, "that, feeling as he did, he could take that drive to the Bradhams'—and Miss Mumby was right in perfectly understanding that. The harm was already done—and there it is."

She had truly for the whole reference the most astounding tones. "You literally mean then," said Gray, "that while you sit here with me he's dying—dying of my want of sense?"

"You've no want of sense"—she spoke as if this were the point really involved. "You've a sense the most exquisite—and surely you had best take in soon rather than late," she went on, "how you'll never be free not to have on every occasion of life to reckon with it and pay for it."

"Oh I say!" was all the wit with which he could at once meet this charge; but she had risen as she spoke and, with a remark about there being another matter, had moved off to a piece of furniture at a distance where she appeared to take something from a drawer unlocked with a sharp snap for the purpose. When she returned to him 135