"
"Well, that suits me to the ground," Bayne retorted unexpectedly. "I
shall be glad to profit as little as possible by Mr. Royston's property."
The notary public, come to take Mrs. Royston's acknowledgment, was
announced at the moment, and the two gentlemen, still wrangling, went
into the reception room to meet him. Mrs. Marable, her eternal Battenberg
in her hands, looked up through the meshes of a perplexity, as visible as
if it were a veritable network, at Gladys, who was standing in the recess
of the bay-window, a book in her hand.
"I didn't understand that remark of Mr. Bayne's as to the poverty of Mr.
Royston's widow," the old lady submitted.
Gladys, the match-maker, laughed delightedly. "_I did!_" she cried
triumphantly.
As she went out of the room, she encountered Lillian in the hall,
summoned to sign and acknowledge the papers. The flush on the cheek of
Gladys, the triumph in her eyes, the laugh in the curves of her beautiful
lips, arrested Mrs. Royston's attention. "What are you laughing about?"
she asked, in a sort of plaintive wonderment.
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