pay for it, Mr. Prodmore—if you'll only tell me your figure."
"My figure?"
"Your figure."
Mr. Prodmore waited—then removed his eyes from her face. He appeared to have waited on purpose to let her hope of a soft answer fall from a greater height. "My figure would be quite my own!"
"Then it will match, in that respect," Mrs. Gracedew laughed, "this overture, which is quite my own! As soon as you've let me know it I cable to Missoura Top to have the money sent right out to you."
Mr. Prodmore surveyed in a superior manner this artless picture of a stroke of business. "You imagine that having the money sent right out to me will make you owner of this place?"
She herself, with her head on one side, studied her sketch and seemed to twirl her pencil. "No—not quite. But I'll settle the rest with Captain Yule."
Her companion looked, over his white waistcoat, at his large tense shoes, the patent-leather shine of which so flashed propriety back at him that he became, the next moment, doubly erect on it. "Captain Yule has nothing to sell."
