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"Why, it must have been then that I first saw Moffatt," Ralph reflected; and the thought suggested the memory of other, subsequent meetings in the same building, and of frequent ascents to Moffatt's office during the ardent weeks of their mysterious and remunerative "deal."
From what father says, I am prepared to succumb to you at once. Both father and I like strong oppositions!" The June weather had turned chilly after the brief spell of heat, and when Priscilla was ushered into Margaret Moffatt's private library she found a bright cannel coal fire in the little grate, beside which sat a tall, handsome girl in house gown of creamy white.
Ralph wondered if Moffatt's office were still in the Ararat; and on the way out he paused before the black tablet affixed to the wall of the vestibule and sought and found the name in its familiar place. The next moment he was again absorbed in his own cares.
Through the noise of the crash he heard Moffatt's voice going on without perceptible change of tone: "About that other matter now...you can't feel any meaner about it than I do, I can tell you that... but all we've got to do is to sit tight..." Ralph turned from the voice, and found himself outside on the landing, and then in the street below.
It was long since she had made any conciliatory sign to his family. Moffatt's social gifts were hardly of a kind to please the two ladies: he would have shone more brightly in Peter Van Degen's set than in his wife's. But neither Clare nor Mrs. Fairford had expected a man of conventional cut, and Moffatt's loud easiness was obviously less disturbing to them than to their hostess.
Her eyes turned to the old warm-toned furniture beneath the pictures, and to her own idle image in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Even in that one small room there were enough things of price to buy a release from her most pressing cares; and the great house, in which the room was a mere cell, and the other greater house in Burgundy, held treasures to deplete even such a purse as Moffatt's.
"Oh, Abner," she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter's door. Mr. Spragg's black eyebrows gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident that his anger was not against his wife. "What's the good of Oh Abner-ing? Elmer Moffatt's nothing to us no more'n if we never laid eyes on him." "No I know it; but what's he doing here? Did you speak to him?" she faltered.
She had heard it said that the mother and daughter were lingering abroad for a time on their way home from India. Yet was the girl all the while pining for England, thinking not of her garden, her horse, her pets, but only of this slim young soldier who in a few minutes, perhaps, would knock at Lady Henry's door, in quest of Aileen Moffatt's unknown, unguessed-of cousin?
His face was serious, without underlying irony: the face he wore when he wanted to be trusted. "Very well," she said, turning back. Undine, glancing at her watch as she came out of Moffatt's office, saw that he had been true to his promise of not keeping her more than ten minutes. The fact was characteristic.
I tell you the thing's as safe as a bank." "How do I know it is? You've misled me about it from the first." Moffatt's face grew dark red to the forehead: for the first time in their acquaintance Ralph saw him on the verge of anger. "Well, if you get stuck so do I. I'm in it a good deal deeper than you. That's about the best guarantee I can give; unless you won't take my word for that either."
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