Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/216

THE IVORY TOWER that ever was dug—spade-work comes high, but you'll have the means—and get down into it and sit at the very bottom. Only your hole will become then the feature of the scene, and we shall crowd a thousand deep all round the edge of it."

Gray stood for a moment looking down, then faced his guest as with a slight effort. "Do you know about Rosanna Gaw?" And then while Horton, for reasons of his own, failed at once to answer: "She has come in for millions"

"Twenty-two and a fraction," Haughty said at once. "Do you mean that she sits, like Truth, at the bottom of a well?" he asked still more divertedly.

Gray had a sharp gesture. "If there's a person in the world whom I don't call a façade!"

"You don't call her one?"—Haughty took it right up. And he added as for very compassion: "My poor man, my poor man!"

"She loathes self-exhibition; she loathes being noticed; she loathes every form of publicity." Gray quite flushed for it.

Horton went to the mantel for another cigarette, and there was that in the calm way of it that made his friend, even though helping him this time to a light, wait in silence for his word. "She does more than that"—it was brought quite dryly out. "She loathes every separate dollar she possesses."

Gray's sense of the matter, strenuous though 202