Lady Sandgate jumped the rest 'And it's for him you've come in.'
'It's for him I've come in,' the girl assented with serenity.
'Very good—though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first just tell me
The young friend hesitated still. ''Why '?'
'So particularly to speak to you.'
'Since he was expected and mightn't know where I was,' Lady Grace said after an instant, 'I wanted naturally to be civil to him.'
'And had he time there to tell you,' Lady Sand-gate asked, 'how very civil he wants to be to you?'
'No, only to tell me that his friend—who's off there—was coming; for Kitty at once appropriated him and was still in possession when I came away.' Then, as deciding at last on perfect frankness, Lady Grace went on: 'If you want to know, I sent for news of him because Kitty insisted on my doing so; saying, so very oddly and quite in her own way, that she herself didn't wish to 'appear in it.' She had done nothing but say to me for an hour, rather worryingly, what you've just said—that it's me he's what, like Mr. Bender, she calls 'after'; but as soon as he appeared she pounced on him, and I left him—I assure you quite resignedly—in her hands.'
'She wants'—it was easy for Lady Sandgate to remark—'to talk of you to him.'
'I don't know
'Kitty's an abyss, I grant you, and with my disinterested devotion to your father—in requital of all his kindness to me since Lord Sandgate's death and since your mother's—I can never be too grateful to you, my dear, for your being so different a creature. But what is she going to gain financially,' Lady Sand-gate pursued with a strong emphasis on her adverb, 'by working up our friend's confidence in your listening to him—if you
'I haven't in the least engaged to listen,' said Lady Grace—'it will depend on the music he makes!' But she added with light cynicism: 'Perhaps she's to gain a commission!'
'On his fairly getting you?' And then as the girl assented by silence: 'Is he in a position to pay her one?' Lady Sandgate asked.
'I dare say the Duchess is!'
'But do you see the Duchess
Her young friend's gesture checked it. 'Ah, don't tell me how many—it's too sad and too ugly and too wrong!' To which, however, Lady Grace added: 'But perhaps that will be just her way!' And then as her companion seemed for the moment not quite to follow: 'By letting Kitty off her debt.'
'You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?'
'Kitty goes free.'
'She has her creditor's release?'
'For every shilling.'
'And if he only fails?'
'Why then of course,' said now quite lucid Lady Grace, 'she throws herself more than ever on poor father.'
'Poor father indeed!'—Lady Sandgate richly sighed it
It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess. 'Yes—but he after all and in spite of everything adores her.'
'To the point, you mean'—for Lady Sandgate could clearly but wonder—'of really sacrificing you?'
The weight of Lady Grace's charming deep eyes on her face made her pause while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange determined in the girl a grave appeal. 'You think I
Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly. '
Lady Grace waited a moment 'Do you mean for Kitty?'
'For himself even—if they should convince you, among them, that he cares for you.'
Lady Grace had another delay. 'Well, he's his awful mother's son.'
'Yes—but you wouldn't marry his mother.'
'No—but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately conscious of her.'
'Even when,' Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, 'she so markedly likes you?'
This determined in the girl a fine impatience. 'She doesn't 'like' me, she only
To this luminous account of the matter Lady Sand-gate turned as to a genial sun-burst. 'I see indeed—for the