Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/196

THE IVORY TOWER about in alone. It comes to me," she further risked, "that if Rosanna isn't there, as you say, she quite ought to be—and that in her place I should feel it no more than decent to go over and sit with him."

This appeared to strike Davey in a splendid number of lights—which, however, though collectively dazzling, allowed discriminations. "It perhaps bears a little on the point that she has herself just sustained a grave bereavement—with her offices to her own dead to think of first. That was present to me in your talk a moment since of Haughty 's finding her."

"Very true"—it was Cissy's practice, once struck, ever amusedly to play with the missile: "it is of course extraordinary that those bloated old richards, at one time so associated, should have flickered out almost at the same hour. What it comes to then," she went on, "is that Mr. Gray might be, or perhaps even ought to be, condoling over at the other house with her. However, it's their own business, and all I really care for is that he should be so keen as you say about seeing Haughty. I just delight," she said, "in his being keen about Haughty."

"I'm glad it satisfies you then," Davey returned—"for I was on the point of suggesting that with the sense of his desolation you just expressed you might judge your own place to be at once at his side." 182