"
"In which case the library became yours?"
He smiled involuntarily, for she had him there, and she knew it.
"It became nothing of the sort, and if it had I could hardly go
against my father's wishes by holding on to it."
"Can't you see that it's equally impossible for me to take it?"
"Why? Try and think of it as a simple matter of business."
He spoke like a tired man, straining after a polite endurance of her
feminine persistence and refining fantasy. "It hasn't anything to do
with you or me."
Thus did he turn against her the argument with which she had crushed
him in another such dispute nine years ago.
"I am more business-like than you are. I remember perfectly well that
your father paid more than a thousand pounds for those books in the
beginning."
"That needn't trouble you. It has been virtually deducted. I'm sorry
to say a few very valuable books were sold before the mortgage and
could not be recovered."
He had given himself away by that word "recovered." Her eyes searched
him through and through to find his falsehood, as they had searched
him once before to find his truth. "It is very, very good of you," she
said.
"Of _me_? Am _I_ bothering you? Don't think of me except as my
father's executor."
"Did you know that he wanted you to do this, or did you only think it?
Was it really his express wish?"
He looked her in the face and lied boldly and freely. "It was.
Absolutely.
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