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RV 201 Pauline's breath failed her. She listened with straining ears.

"You haven't seen her, then—she hasn't told you?" Manford continued. "She was getting him out on her own responsibility to turn a film for Klawhammer. Simply that! By the mercy of heaven I headed her off—but we hadn't a minute to lose."

In her bewilderment at this outburst, and at what it revealed, Pauline continued to sit speechless. "Michelangelo—Klawhammer? I didn't know! But wouldn't it have been the best solution, perhaps?"

"Solution—of what? Don't you think one member of the family on the screen's enough at a time? Or would it have looked prettier to see him and Lita featured together on every hoarding in the country? My God—I thought I'd done the right thing in acting for you there was no time to consult you  but if you don't care, why should I? He's none of my family  and she isn't either, for that matter."

He had swung round from the hearth, and faced her for the first time, his brows contracted, the veins swelling on his temples, his hands grasping his knees as if to constrain himself not to start up in righteous indignation. He was evidently deeply disturbed, yet his anger, she felt, was only the unconscious mask of another emotion—an emotion she could not divine. His vehemence, and the sense