The Outcry: -1911

to ask your consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if she can kindly give me time.'

'You've known then of her being with me?'

'I've known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,' he explained; 'of her wishing not to go to her sister's, and of Lord Theign's having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of proceeding, to some foreign part.'

'And you've learnt it from having seen her—these three or four weeks?'

'I've met her—but just barely—two or three times: at a 'private view' at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn't told you?'

Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her thick lustre. 'I wanted to see how much you'd tell.' She waited even as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. 'Once again at dinner?'

'Yes, but alas not near her!'

'Once then at a private view?—when, with the squash they usually are, you might have been very near her indeed!'

The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth. 'Yes—it was a squash!'

'And once,' his hostess pursued, 'in the lobby of the opera?'

'After 'Tristan'—yes; but with some awful grand people I didn't know.'

She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. 'Oh, the Pennimans are nobody! But now,' she asked, 'you've come, you say, on 'business'?'

'Very important, please—which accounts for the hour I've ventured and the appearance I present.'

'I don't ask you too much to 'account,'' Lady Sandgate kindly said; 'but I can't not wonder if she hasn't told you what things have happened.'

He cast about. 'She has had no chance to tell me anything—beyond the fact of her being here.'

'Without the reason?'

''The reason'?' he echoed.

She gave it up, going straighter. 'She's with me then as an old firm friend. Under my care and protection.'

'I see'—he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint in respect to himself. 'She puts you on your guard.'

Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. 'She puts me on my honour—or at least her father does.'

'As to her seeing me'

'As to my seeing at least—what may happen to her.'

'Because—you say—things have happened?'

His companion fairly sounded him. 'You've only talked—when you've met—of 'art'?'

'Well,' he smiled, ''art is long'!'

'Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord Theign is presently due—'

'Here, back already from abroad?'—he was all alert.

'He has not yet gone—he comes up this morning to start.'

'And stops here on his way?'

'To take the train de luxe this afternoon to his annual Salsomaggiore. But with so little time to spare,' she went on reassuringly, 'that, to simplify—as he wired me an hour ago from Dedborough—he has given rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is particularly to wait for him.'

'And who may therefore arrive at any moment?'

She looked at her bracelet watch. 'Scarcely before noon. So you'll just have your chance—'

'Thank the powers then!'—Hugh grasped at it. 'I shall have it best if you'll be so good as to tell me first—well,' he faltered, 'what it is that, to my great disquiet, you've further alluded to; what it is that has occurred.'

Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments pronounced. 'Haven't you at least guessed that she has fallen under her father's extreme reprobation?'

'Yes, so much as that—that she must have greatly annoyed him—I have been supposing. But isn't it by her having asked me to act for her? I mean about the Mantovano—which I have done.'

Lady Sandgate wondered. 'You've 'acted'?'

'It's what I've come to tell her at last—and I'm all impatience.'

'I see, I see'—she had caught a clue. 'He hated that—yes; but you haven't really made out,' she put to him, 'the other effect of your hour at Dedborough?' She recognised, however, while she spoke, that his divination had failed, and she didn't trouble him to confess it. 'Directly you had gone she 'turned down' Lord John. Declined, I mean, the offer of his hand in marriage.'

Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. 'He proposed there—?'

'He had spoken, that day, before—before your talk with Lord Theign, who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr. Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after