Her letter,
signifying delicately her assent to his proposal,
had come to him that very morning--was in his pocket now.
What did he care about the bye-gone aspirations of
other would-be suitors? And, as for Plowden, he had
not even known of her return to London. Clearly there
remained no communications of any sort between them.
It was not at all on her account, he assured himself,
that he had turned against Plowden. But what other reason
could there be? He observed his visitor's perturbed
and dejected mien with a grim kind of satisfaction--but
still he could not tell why.
"This is all terribly important to me," the nobleman said,
breaking the unpleasant silence. His voice was surcharged
with earnestness. "Apparently you are annoyed with
something--what it may be I can't for the life of me make out.
All I can say is"--and he broke off with a helpless
gesture which seemed to imply that he feared to say anything.
Thorpe put out his lips. "I don't know what you mean,"
he said, brusquely.
"What I mean"--the other echoed, with bewildered vagueness
of glance. "I'm all at sea. I don't in the least grasp
the meaning of anything. You yourself volunteered
the declaration that you would do great things for me.
'We are rich men together'--those were your own words.
I urged you at the time to go slowly--to consider carefully
whether you weren't being too generous.
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