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“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” | Lady Sandgate | I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: | a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on | Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined | or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. | Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang | house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord | vision. “Ah yes--we know something of that!” Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye, fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion. “You too then?” She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, | this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed.<|quote|>“Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”</|quote|>But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the | The Outcry |
But she at once added: | No speaker | put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on | resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If | less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very | Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as | away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want | a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived | eye, fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion. “You too then?” She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, | a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.”<|quote|>But she at once added:</|quote|>“That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce | The Outcry |
“That is _if_--!” | Lady Sandgate | But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a | put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, | he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” | the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be | hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as | daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as | with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion. “You too then?” She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all | this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added:<|quote|>“That is _if_--!”</|quote|>pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then | The Outcry |
pausing on it with a smile. | No speaker | once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if | wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain | you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid | his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: | glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a | with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set | that was yet not steeped in compassion. “You too then?” She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one | have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!”<|quote|>pausing on it with a smile.</|quote|>“If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person | The Outcry |
“If what then?” | Lord John | on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be | added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all | at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful | have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin | a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would | debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show | compassion. “You too then?” She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened | her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile.<|quote|>“If what then?”</|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource | The Outcry |
“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” | Lady Sandgate | a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the | _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he | mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful | irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to | an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in | of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that | then?” She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a | of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?”<|quote|>“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at | The Outcry |
said Lady Sandgate, | No speaker | without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He | in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined | would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It | that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his | capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She | on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” | you see, and where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I | yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I | The Outcry |
“to the very end.” | Lady Sandgate | have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously | of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The | resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him | very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he | somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as | could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. | where----” “Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out | had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“to the very end.”</|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to | The Outcry |
He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. | No speaker | Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” | to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as | to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as | a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What | living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, | a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So | in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention | her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.”<|quote|>He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.</|quote|>“The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as | The Outcry |
“The very end of what?” | Lord John | contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as | end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions | once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be | you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you | low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll | is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady | out of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean | wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her.<|quote|>“The very end of what?”</|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in | The Outcry |
She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. | No speaker | “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully | contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, | pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever | you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on | in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been | the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” | let me say!” She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and | her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?”<|quote|>She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.</|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” | The Outcry |
“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” | Lady Sandgate | risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him | and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations | cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, | person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that | certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with | the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” | indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. | which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something.<|quote|>“Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”</|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you | The Outcry |
It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. | No speaker | so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as | reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” | Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more | most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang | always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my | this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear | simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. | his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.”<|quote|>It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.</|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about | The Outcry |
“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” | Lady Sandgate | appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You | doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the | to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself | But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” | Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a | do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This | feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.” This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who | “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short.<|quote|>“When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”</|quote|>To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- | The Outcry |
To which he subjoined: | No speaker | she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have | “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how | her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate | it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a | in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But | She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him | the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming | or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.”<|quote|>To which he subjoined:</|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind | The Outcry |
“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” | Lord John | good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative | as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to | all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. | “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must | have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close | and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t | his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told | and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined:<|quote|>“You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”</|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ | The Outcry |
This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. | No speaker | knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that | to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” | and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if | in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” | Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it | Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try | “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to | ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.”<|quote|>This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.</|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept | The Outcry |
“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” | Lord John | with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a | to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good | as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, | her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” | than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her | and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord | I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in | the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge.<|quote|>“What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I | The Outcry |
Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. | No speaker | you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the | “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, | he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must | as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the | of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at | admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of | on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in | He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.</|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By | The Outcry |
“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” | Lady Sandgate | humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he | moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I | This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little | and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing | echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, | dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it | should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an | hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything.<|quote|>“I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”</|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. | The Outcry |
“It wouldn’t make we,” | Lord John | that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if | that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But | take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is | him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and | ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady | his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might | has made such an impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has | she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.”<|quote|>“It wouldn’t make we,”</|quote|>he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was | The Outcry |
he quite rang out, | No speaker | me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! | because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he | with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I | cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing | she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John | smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to | impression here.” Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three | you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,”<|quote|>he quite rang out,</|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which | The Outcry |
“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” | Lord John | we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question | tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to | challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better | you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a | she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other | He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of | forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail | resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out,<|quote|>“if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”</|quote|>he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well | The Outcry |
he allowed, | No speaker | to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would | out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to | to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” | To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply | it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to | without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I | never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him | briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,”<|quote|>he allowed,</|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded | The Outcry |
“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” | Lord John | as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as | I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your | Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with | he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope | a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with | a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take | a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” | without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed,<|quote|>“there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”</|quote|>She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be | The Outcry |
She waited a little as for more. | No speaker | him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I | your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you | makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, | his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I | Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace | represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words | thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in | young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”<|quote|>She waited a little as for more.</|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s | The Outcry |
“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” | Lady Sandgate | a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are | in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” | we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, | prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it | he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? | a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, | more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced | Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more.<|quote|>“Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”</|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what | The Outcry |
“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” | Lord John | that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then | little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re | I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply | “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her | her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must | a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in | with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” | hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?”<|quote|>“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”</|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I | The Outcry |
She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. | No speaker | you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in | “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been | “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure | Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens | as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there | which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency | mere most beautiful daughter at home.” She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might | fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”<|quote|>She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.</|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into | The Outcry |
“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” | Lady Sandgate | then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground | it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I | to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is | good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in | and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can | ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, | the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?” His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, | host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully.<|quote|>“We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”</|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge | The Outcry |
“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” | Lord John | resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which | close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person | lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as | in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady | to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as | mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will | his thought. But she smiled for it. “Well, in that set----!” “My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good | of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”<|quote|>“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words | The Outcry |
Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. | No speaker | likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens | right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact | discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a | the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when | suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit | you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you | “I’m much obliged!” “Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because | definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.</|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by | The Outcry |
“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” | Lady Sandgate | her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John | to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last | to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace | then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead | a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate | and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ | criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----” “Make it” --he took her sense straight from her-- “the house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about | the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.<|quote|>“The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”</|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling | The Outcry |
“Lady Imber’s _here?_” | Lord John | beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She | that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve | go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally | and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, | we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been | what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent | the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house | could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”<|quote|>“Lady Imber’s _here?_”</|quote|>Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive | The Outcry |
Lord John alertly asked. | No speaker | elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as | at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have | way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So | my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion | rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are | through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been | of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that | cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_”<|quote|>Lord John alertly asked.</|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To | The Outcry |
“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” | Lady Sandgate | _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course | his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. | likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them | so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not | didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with | once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if | bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy | it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.<|quote|>“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”</|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in | The Outcry |
“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” | Lord John | a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because | visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an | listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he | pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as | me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him | could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I | to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the | pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”<|quote|>“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”</|quote|>the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to | The Outcry |
the young man supposed. | No speaker | in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally | But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she | least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- | ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or | waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into | “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out | could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and | to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,”<|quote|>the young man supposed.</|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, | The Outcry |
“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” | Lady Sandgate | her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I | be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when | elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately | if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such | for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did | He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. | a diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. | There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.<|quote|>“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”</|quote|>said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” | The Outcry |
said Lady Sandgate, | No speaker | show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you | feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed | night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” | to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was | are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the | of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting | part of the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you | in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,”<|quote|>said Lady Sandgate,</|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with | The Outcry |
“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” | Lady Sandgate | well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a | an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically | other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a | Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much | better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. | took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and | reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any such associations.” “Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, | “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate,<|quote|>“but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”</|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my | The Outcry |
Lord John figured it a moment. | No speaker | act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged | Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people | her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge | must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” | really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it | “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors | the payee!” The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve | Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”<|quote|>Lord John figured it a moment.</|quote|>“Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You | The Outcry |
“Lady Imber” | Lord John | John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- | of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, | case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; | arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was | woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to | _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. | to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking | She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment.<|quote|>“Lady Imber”</|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and | The Outcry |
--he ironically enlarged the figure-- | No speaker | it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, | her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, | her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or | at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that | almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make | It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named | this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s | everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”<|quote|>--he ironically enlarged the figure--</|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you | The Outcry |
“_can_ lead people away.” | Lord John | --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion | it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be | “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between | elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have | her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to | in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade | almost as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last | you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure--<|quote|>“_can_ lead people away.”</|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you | The Outcry |
“Oh, dear Grace,” | Lady Sandgate | figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately | Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed | naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I | _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to | feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the | insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She | taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady | end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.”<|quote|>“Oh, dear Grace,”</|quote|>his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, | The Outcry |
his companion returned, | No speaker | people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” | enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him | show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” | alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you | here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do | you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the | you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This | clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,”<|quote|>his companion returned,</|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t | The Outcry |
“happens fortunately to be firm!” | Lady Sandgate | dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him | “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. | well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was | arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” | frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I | as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my | well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in | said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned,<|quote|>“happens fortunately to be firm!”</|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment | The Outcry |
This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. | No speaker | “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t | dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she | “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment | other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said | a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the | good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as | represent?” She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took | cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!”<|quote|>This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.</|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out | The Outcry |
“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” | Lord John | for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about | This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what | them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I | garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” | my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch | the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, | represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian | of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal.<|quote|>“Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”</|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” | The Outcry |
“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” | Lady Sandgate | she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” | don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was | figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been | won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, | occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in | it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me | I grant--that more than _one_ perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her | to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?”<|quote|>“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”</|quote|>“Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting | The Outcry |
“Well, I try to judge” | Lord John | what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was | as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed | dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you | an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so | way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know | more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten | healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the | as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.”<|quote|>“Well, I try to judge”</|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you | The Outcry |
--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. | No speaker | “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of | what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as | “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I | well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her | to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother | it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. | with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? | as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge”<|quote|>--and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.</|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in | The Outcry |
“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” | Lord John | a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in | John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might | however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared | was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it | just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” | humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you | to your commending yourself to dear Grace?” nan “treatment” by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does | own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow.<|quote|>“But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”</|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that | The Outcry |
There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet | No speaker | I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest | seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I | about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, | “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess | arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have | because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days | been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away. He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he | cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.”<|quote|>There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet</|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope | The Outcry |
“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” | Lady Sandgate | have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t | it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said | to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the | companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I | asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one | I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to | had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more | lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet<|quote|>“Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”</|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. | The Outcry |
“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” | Lord John | absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I | moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, | possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her | This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his | other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened | happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my | handsomely, without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up | own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”<|quote|>“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”</|quote|>he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her | The Outcry |
he said with impatience, | No speaker | am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well | about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s | a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency | as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in | in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you | be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in | an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, | daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,”<|quote|>he said with impatience,</|quote|>“I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend | The Outcry |
“I want help.” | Lord John | But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what | I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And | brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted | _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded | she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s | to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, | instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went | Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience,<|quote|>“I want help.”</|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been | The Outcry |
“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” | Lady Sandgate | with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to | I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read | in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling | mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch | course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” | you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does | point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly | are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.”<|quote|>“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”</|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in | The Outcry |
And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. | No speaker | what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing | help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that | want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an | “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s | won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and | with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any | and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It | end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.”<|quote|>And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.</|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could | The Outcry |
“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” | Lady Sandgate | stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his | her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, | giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” | as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean | Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped | really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and | certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And | yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights.<|quote|>“By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”</|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s | The Outcry |
Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. | No speaker | Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To | will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more | a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and | am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would | strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram | perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This | would scarce have been considerately irritable. “May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the question of my ‘arranging’?” “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking | “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”<|quote|>Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.</|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him | The Outcry |
“Well, and by _me_.” | Lord John | an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with | as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in | bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” | it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if | can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded | things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its | “I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms | it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.<|quote|>“Well, and by _me_.”</|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, | The Outcry |
To which he added with more of a challenge in it: | No speaker | himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what | becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By | her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, | him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he | as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, | you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week | the very clever son of a very clever mother.” “Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the | in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.”<|quote|>To which he added with more of a challenge in it:</|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord | The Outcry |
“But you really know what my mother will do?” | Lord John | of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate | which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. | the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one | produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting | I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has | about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend | less clever than you think,” he replied-- “if you really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not | You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:<|quote|>“But you really know what my mother will do?”</|quote|>“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. | The Outcry |
“By my system,” | Lady Sandgate | what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see | it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother | mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean | effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my | possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in | Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to | really think it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at | here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?”<|quote|>“By my system,”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here | The Outcry |
Lady Sandgate smiled, | No speaker | will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What | really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is | Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” | a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party | John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” | ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” | of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, | go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate smiled,</|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could | The Outcry |
“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” | Lady Sandgate | my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- | my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” | for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t | of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an | sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, | extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it | all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!” “Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are | the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled,<|quote|>“you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”</|quote|>“Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady | The Outcry |
“Well, it’s that,” | Lord John | is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” | What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. | becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and | shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a | too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit | as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple | she’s the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to | convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!”<|quote|>“Well, it’s that,”</|quote|>he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed | The Outcry |
he allowed-- | No speaker | you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” | will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should | touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I | telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and | I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope | have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good | in all our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the | for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,”<|quote|>he allowed--</|quote|>“and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, | The Outcry |
“and something else.” | Lord John | “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. | is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for | himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a | by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors | to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you | for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is | our world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the | it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed--<|quote|>“and something else.”</|quote|>“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My | The Outcry |
“Something else?” | Lady Sandgate | he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should | you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent | by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if | home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. | There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” | arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all | would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She | But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.”<|quote|>“Something else?”</|quote|>she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week | The Outcry |
she derisively echoed. | No speaker | “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for | “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have | To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to | her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord | an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve | at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so | most resemble--for her general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head | likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?”<|quote|>she derisively echoed.</|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, | The Outcry |
“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” | Lady Sandgate | “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one | he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one | added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to | she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the | it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide | wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I | general ability to put what she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s | have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed.<|quote|>“I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”</|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady | The Outcry |
“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” | Lord John | lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if | think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really | what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party | the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for | absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part | arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” | added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on it with a smile. “If what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question | say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.”<|quote|>“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”</|quote|>he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good | The Outcry |
he hastened to explain-- | No speaker | I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s | but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t | “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But | for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as | be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady | a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been | what then?” “Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the | the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,”<|quote|>he hastened to explain--</|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which | The Outcry |
“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” | Lord John | idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” | Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment | What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have | truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you | with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general | garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if | I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a | well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain--<|quote|>“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”</|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said | The Outcry |
“Mightn’t you go and see?” | Lady Sandgate | Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment | explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look | over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ | a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, | what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does | always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known | her kinds of cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, | what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”<|quote|>“Mightn’t you go and see?”</|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to | The Outcry |
“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” | Lord John | “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention | Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean | allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade | from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent | And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the | won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it | exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to the very end.” He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly | he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?”<|quote|>“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”</|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” | The Outcry |
And he renewed his attention to his watch. | No speaker | out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at | if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I | ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light | in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago | sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, | naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. | contemptuously declined to follow her. “The very end of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what | see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”<|quote|>And he renewed his attention to his watch.</|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady | The Outcry |
“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” | Lord John | his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken | matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have | it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John | mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man | help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m | said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve | of what?” She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I | nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch.<|quote|>“I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”</|quote|>But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady | The Outcry |
But she had already taken him up. | No speaker | the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American | getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours | explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had | guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find | with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up | noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from | there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” | against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------”<|quote|>But she had already taken him up.</|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which | The Outcry |
“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” | Lady Sandgate | had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John | I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade | acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept | what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about | of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every | very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been | to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so wonderfully successful _general_ career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir | try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up.<|quote|>“You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”</|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more | The Outcry |
“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” | Lord John | and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with | an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She | if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her | else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did | to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! | Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about | career.” It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” | that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”<|quote|>“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”</|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined | The Outcry |
Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light | No speaker | motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I | a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” | to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago | echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, | if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see | enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though | however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. | enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”<|quote|>Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light</|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple | The Outcry |
“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” | Lady Sandgate | gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but | a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he | “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The | it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of | thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua | to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, | you’ll be as good.” To which he subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The | “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light<|quote|>“You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”</|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length | The Outcry |
Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. | No speaker | hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” | “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the | just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to | hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, | his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much | moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. | begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, | that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!”<|quote|>Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.</|quote|>“Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he | The Outcry |
“Had he told you so?” | Lord John | freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the | for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded | up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, | really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich | it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been | mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you | good she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the | returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered.<|quote|>“Had he told you so?”</|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This | The Outcry |
She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. | No speaker | “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, | freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes | American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, | you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough | becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s | has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which | to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with | about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”<|quote|>She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.</|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which | The Outcry |
“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” | Lady Sandgate | her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out | she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find | with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part | another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you | of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” | mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost | so prompt with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?” Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” | a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance.<|quote|>“He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”</|quote|>The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. | The Outcry |
The young man read out this missive. | No speaker | me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in | ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit | me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her | I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have | “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had | sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? | after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the | This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”<|quote|>The young man read out this missive.</|quote|>“‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all | The Outcry |
It did involve an ambiguity. | No speaker | to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged | start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide | in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly | Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he | she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of | an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and | makes people tell me.” “It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s | added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’”<|quote|>It did involve an ambiguity.</|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at | The Outcry |
“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” | Lord John | It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative | to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general | entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m | him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of | think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have | Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as | wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re | other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity.<|quote|>“Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”</|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of | The Outcry |
Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. | No speaker | been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say | to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He | read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost | as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus | explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had | said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his | convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?” “‘Interested’?” he echoed; | have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”<|quote|>Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.</|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from | The Outcry |
“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” | Lady Sandgate | to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly | in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense | in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome | held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its | go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed | Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate | charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.” She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?” “‘Interested’?” he echoed; though it wasn’t to gain time, he showed, for | returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene.<|quote|>“Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”</|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to | The Outcry |
He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. | No speaker | say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing | scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By | It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that | in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been | I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care | him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. | She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I am?” “No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?” “‘Interested’?” he echoed; though it wasn’t to gain time, he showed, for he would in that case have taken more. “To the extent, you mean, of | as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”<|quote|>He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.</|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a | The Outcry |
“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” | Lord John | sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that | promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have | coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and | ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to | to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of | so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he | but if you are you’ll the better answer it” She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?” “‘Interested’?” he echoed; though it wasn’t to gain time, he showed, for he would in that case have taken more. “To the extent, you mean, of my little percentage?” And then as in silence she | a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly.<|quote|>“My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”</|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as | The Outcry |
“By which you imply that I’m one?” | Lady Sandgate | pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound | monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to | has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which | to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend | American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed | a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it | She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?” “‘Interested’?” he echoed; though it wasn’t to gain time, he showed, for he would in that case have taken more. “To the extent, you mean, of my little percentage?” And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim smile on | --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”<|quote|>“By which you imply that I’m one?”</|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. “I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ | The Outcry |
She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony. | No speaker | you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that | works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But | Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to | out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple | she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as | some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all | it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.” “Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.” Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.” “Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked. “She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.” “Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed. “Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.” Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber” --he ironically enlarged the figure-- “_can_ lead people away.” “Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be firm!” This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against _me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly prejudice----?” “Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what mayn’t--have happened between you.” “Well, I try to judge” --and such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.” There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?” “Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I want help.” “Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.” Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. “Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it: “But you really know what my mother will do?” “By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!” “Well, it’s that,” he allowed-- “and something else.” “Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an ardent lover, would have been enough.” “Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to explain-- “if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.” “Mightn’t you go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.” Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?” She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing me so hard.” “Yet that’s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?” The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. “I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.” “Oh,” Lord John returned, “he kills two birds with one stone--he sees both Sir Joshua and you.” This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. “Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?” The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. “Is that wonder for sale?” She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. “Not, surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!” “I can’t fancy him--no!” And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. “But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.” These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?” “‘Interested’?” he echoed; though it wasn’t to gain time, he showed, for he would in that case have taken more. “To the extent, you mean, of my little percentage?” And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim smile on him: “Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about your great-grandmother--you’ve nothing | go and see?” “I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.” And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned------” But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a ‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?” “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation. She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped was coming for me!” Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?” She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.” The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.” Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?” He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.” “By which you imply that I’m one?”<|quote|>She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.</|quote|>“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.” This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?” “Because our good friend here has had no reason” --Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.” “I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered-- “if I had at all known he wanted it.” Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.” This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?” “Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.” She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?” “Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he wants.” “And does he want only” --her wonder grew and grew-- “What-do-you-call-’ems’?” “He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went _at_ him.” It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?” “Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well, _she_ took care of that.” “How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous | The Outcry |
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