Potts's
urgency. She sat silent for a moment, and when she spoke it was in a
changed voice, dulled, monotonous. "If you insist on my speaking, now--and
openly,--I must say to you that I altogether disapprove of your project.
You will never," said Valerie, with a rising color, "gain my consent to
it."
A heavy silence followed her words, the only sound that of Tison's faint
sniffings, as, his nose outstretched and moving from side to side, he
cautiously savored the air in Mr. Potts's direction. Mrs. Potts stirred
slightly, and uttered a sharp, "Tht--tht." Mr. Potts, his hand still stayed
in his beard, gazed from under the fringed penthouse of his brows with an
arrested, bovine look.
It was Imogen who broke the silence. Standing beside her mother she had
felt the shock of a curious fulfilment go through her, as if she had almost
expected to hear what she now heard. She mastered her voice to ask:--"We
must demand your reasons for this--this very strange attitude, mama."
Her mother did not raise her eyes. "I don't think that your father was a
man of sufficient distinction to justify the publishing of his biography."
At this Mr. Potts breathed a deep, indignant volume of sound, louder than a
sigh, less articulate than a groan, through the forests of his beard.
"Sufficient distinction, Mrs. Upton! Sufficient distinction! You evidently
are quite ignorant of how great was the distinction of your late husband.
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