She laughed, and her laugh disengaged her, so that before he could reply she had again put space between them.
He accepted the space now—he appeared so sure of his point. "Then let me go on caring. When I asked you awhile back for some possible adjustment to my new source of credit, you simply put off the question—told me I must trust to time for it. Well," said Clement Yule, "I've trusted to time so effectually that ten little minutes have made me find it. I've found it because I've so quickly found you. May I, Mrs. Gracedew, keep all that I've found? I offer you in return the only thing I have to give—I offer you my hand and my life."
She held him off, across the hall, for a time almost out of proportion to the previous wait he had just made so little of. Then at last also, when she answered, it might have passed for a plea for further postponement, even for a plea for mercy. "Ah, Captain Yule———!" But she turned suddenly off: the flower had been nipped in the bud by the re-entrance of Chivers, at whom his master veritably glowered.
"What the devil is it?"
The old man showed the shock, but he had his duty. "Another party."
