Cressida by Clare Darcy Page A

wish to buy it?” Cressida demanded. “I haven’t seen the house for years, but it was falling to rack even then.”
    “I believe,” said Sir Octavius, looking at the tips of his fingers, which he had joined together in a very legalistic way, though with his eyebrow still quizzically raised, “that the prospective purchaser is a gentleman named Rossiter. To be precise, Captain Deverell Rossiter—”
    If he had anticipated a lively reaction to his words, he was not disappointed. Cressida said, “Rossiter!” in an incredulous tone, and then, “ Rossiter !” again, with indignation now uppermost, after which she rose and began to pace up and down the room, looking so very handsome in her anger that Sir Octavius regretted all over again that he was not twenty years younger and precluded by his business interests from falling in love.
    “This,” she said presently, pausing and gazing at him with a martial light in her eyes, “is insupportable!”
    “No, is it?” Sir Octavius looked at her blandly. “I confess I really don’t quite see why.”
    “He is doing it on purpose!” Cressida said accusingly.
    “Well, yes,” acknowledged Sir Octavius. “A man usually does not buy an estate, I believe, unless it is on purpose, as you say.”
    “I mean on purpose to be disagreeable to me! Cressida said inexorably. “There must be dozens of other houses he could buy! Hundreds of them! And he doesn’t even care for Gloucestershire! He told me so once.
    “Perhaps,” said Sir Octavius, with a deceptively innocent air, “he has changed his mind. ”
    Cressida gave him an indignant glance and resumed her pacing.
    “Well, I won’t have it!” she declared presently. “If anyone has the right to buy Calverton Place, it is me—! And why Uncle Arthur was tottyheaded enough not to apply to me when he found himself at Point Non-Plus, instead of going about to sell the estate to a perfect stranger—”
    Sir Octavius shook his head. “Well, I won’t say it wouldn’t have been better if he had done so, he agreed judicially. “But Mr. Arthur Calverton—if you will forgive my saying so, my dear—has never been distinguished by the possession of even a moderate amount of common sense. And no doubt he felt a certain embarrassment in revealing to you into how desperate a state he had allowed his affairs to fall.”
    “Well, he is going to feel even more embarrassed when I tell him what I think of this—this nonsensical scheme of his!” Cressida declared. “Which, of course, he will not be allowed to go through with! I shall go to Gloucestershire myself at once. ”
    “But I rather fancy you are too late, my child,” said Sir Octavius, who was looking somewhat amused by the tempest his disclosure had aroused, but at the same time was regarding Cressida with an even more keenly penetrating gaze than usual, as if he found something very revealing in her wrath. “According to the information I have received, matters have already gone so far that any attempt at interference on your part at this time will probably be quite unavailing. ”
    “Nonsense!” said Cressida impatiently. “If documents have been signed, they must—they must just unsign them, or tear them up, or whatever must be done to make them of no effect! It is all a great piece of absurdity! Naturally, as a Calverton, I must have Calverton Place!”
    “But you have never shown the smallest interest in it before this time,” Sir Octavius reminded her, looking still more amused. “How was your uncle to have known you would feel this way? No, no, Cressy, it won’t do!” he went on, as she turned to him, about to make some wrathful reply. “You have accused Rossiter of wishing to buy Calverton Place only to spite you, but are you quite sure that the shoe is not on the other foot, and that you  are determined he shall not have it only in order to spite  him?”
    A flush came up in Cressida’s face. “That,” she